278: The Wins Don't Always Come Easy and You Don't Always Win. With Bow Hunter, John Dudley

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:40 - John Dudley. Bow Hunting and Life. 1:54:49 - Final thoughts. 2:51:44 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:19:28 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 278 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a little cold outside.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  But it doesn't matter.

• 0:18Jocko Willink?

  Nothing else matters right now. Except doing my job right.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  This job.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  I take another step. As gently as I can, as quietly. As I can.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  This is where it all matters.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  I can't let them hear me. If they do. They'll be gone.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  Then I won't get my shot.

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  I take another quiet step. I see my buddy freeze.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  He sees them.

• 1:07Jocko Willink?

  They must be in range.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  My buddy slowly looks back at me and gives me a nod.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  It's go time.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  I prepare my weapon.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  By now.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  I know this weapon well. I've shot thousands of. Rounds through it in the last year for this moment.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  Ever since I was a little kid, it's been this way.

• 1:50Jocko Willink?

  Stalking through the woods, closing the distance, trying to see without being seen.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  My adult life was much of the same, sneaking around in the woods or in the desert or in the city or in the jungle.

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  I take a few more steps and find some cover by a tree. This will keep me hidden.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  My buddy gives me a hand signal.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  He's giving me the range.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Nothing else matters. I initiate the procedures.

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  My mind is full, but it's empty. My heart is beating, but it's steady. It all comes down to this moment.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm alive.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Now that may have sounded like a combat scenario.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  But it wasn't. It was a description of a more recent pursuit of mine.

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  Bow hunting. And the buddy I reference is a real person.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  A real person who's an incredible archer. An amazing hunter. One of the best coaches I have ever worked with in any discipline.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  And most important, a friend that is always ready to help. Not just me, but an entire community of people. The world renowned founder of Knock On Archery. John Dudley. Dud? What's up, man? Thanks for coming on.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  I want you to finish that story. That was awesome.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  It was like fire, right? Yeah, and especially this season where we were on a lot of bulls and that happened, that little, that little thing played out.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Time and time and time again.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  I ended up not getting any shots off, but man, it was freaking fun.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  Alright, man, let's go. There's a lot of people that really don't know much about you and let's, let's go back to the beginning, cuz I have heard pieced together stories of your life and there's a lot of good ones, man. It's always surprising that you're here, you weren't arrested, you're not in prison, you're not dead. You know, there's a lot of different avenues you could have headed down.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Dang right. Yeah. Just a horrible.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  I don't deserve my wife or my son, cause like all the time I'm just like karma. Like he's that real patient sniper and at some point like I don't think he's made any fires yet. If he has, they've been off so much. I haven't heard him come by, but like I'm still waiting just to get sniped. Cause I, I deserve it if it happened.

• 5:00Jocko Willink?

  All right. So where were you born?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Uh, Fort Bragg.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause your dad was in the army.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and is that where you, did you spend any time in Fort Bragg? Do you remember if you spent any time?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  I don't remember it. No, I don't remember it. Cause it was, uh, I was, it was 76. And then I think by 77, we were in the Mississippi Delta.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Was he still in the army?

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I think he just got out.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  And then what was, what did he do once he got out of the army?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Uh, he was a, he was pretty much like Bill Murray. He was a groundskeeper for a golf course while he went to college. You know, after getting out of Nam, you know, came back and went to college.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  He was like, and he was like.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  He was freaking scoping out gophers and. Wait, this is Caddyshack Bill Murray.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember, I remember like being with him in that golf cart cruising around and he went to, and this is stuff I haven't even talked to him about. This is just from memory from that long ago, but I'm sure he went to Delta State in Cleveland, Mississippi. My mom worked for Baxter Healthcare and that's why I think we were there. And so my dad went to college for psychology. And you know, I'm, I remember plugging, learning to plug holes on the golf greens and, and smoking that first ball washer with the golf cart. When I was, I don't even know how old I was. I just know like, you know, my dad being like, bring that golf cart over here.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  And it was in reverse and I just stomped on it and just drove over the ball washer.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  The first time karma made a little, that's the first time karma started to go, wait a second. I need to be tracking on this dude.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I wonder what my dad would think like, you know, damn, is that a sign? Like that would have been a, that would have been a, a real easy one to get, to get over. Yeah. Cause it just.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  I was, I was a tornado for a while.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you do like the bulk of your, like when you were in, let's say like sixth, seventh, eighth, when you start actually, you know, figuring out the world and all that, where are you then?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Um, it would have been Illinois. We, we were in the Delta until I was seven, I think. And then my mom got transferred up to Northern Illinois, um, to work for Baxter. And that's kind of where I grew up. And when I came up there, honestly, I was a little bit rebellious. Not really sure why. I just, uh, I don't know. It was just what I was into. Like I was a skater. And honestly, there was, um, I enjoy skating. I enjoyed like freaking ninja movies and

• 7:46Speaker 01

  so I like, I built ramps and, you know, and, and people, and I was just like a punk in Northern Illinois. That, you know, when, when everything was like skate or die and there's, you know, all these like anti skate things, that was me. So yeah, at school, you know, it, there, there was definitely a little bit of, I don't know, hate towards skating then. And I wasn't like, I had no drive athletically. I was just wanting to like pierce my ears, like play with fireworks, you know, blow stuff up.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Skate around.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  This is how old?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Built, um, eight to 13, just like, you know, my first construction job I said was building ramps. I mean, I had ramps all over the place. My sister freaking hated them.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  How good, how good at skating were you?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Hmm. I would say I was just below intermediate.

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  Is it something where you, how many hours a day were you skating?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Like a lot. Yeah, I had half pipes and quarter pipes.

• 9:00Jocko Willink?

  What's up with the stellar level of just below intermediate?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Cause I, the, the only instruction I had was watching the search for animal chin freaking every day like in a big box of cereal and then go out and just try to get after it.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  So what, at what point or what was it that made you start doing athletics, sports?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  You teeing me up for this? Uh, so I think when I was.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  Is there some weird story?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause my dad was, I always knew my dad was a super athlete. You know, he was my uncle and you know, my mom always told me how athletic my dad was. And, um, not to mention he was just good at, you know, anything like honestly, even a skateboard. He's just like, what's that? And I, oh, I, you know, I'm learning to skate on this half pipe. And he's just like, oh, let me check it out. And then he'd just do it.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, you're just over here driving into ball walkers.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, uh, no, I, I, like I said, I liked fireworks and like, you know, blowing stuff up and you know, one thing led to another and fricking burned my house down at 10 years old. Uh, or 11, maybe 11.

• 10:17Jocko Willink?

  You mean literally?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Everything except for what was in my dad's car while he was at work and what was in my mom's car while she was, I think in Puerto Rico on a business trip.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  How old were you?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  I think I was like 11 or 12.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  How did it happen?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Playing with fire, freaking lit some stuff on my bed on fire and then like put it out, called my dad. And my dad, you know, he's like, did you get it out? I said, yeah, I got it out. And he goes, is there smoke in the house? I go, oh yeah, there's fricking tons of smoke. And he's like, open up all the windows. He said, you know, he's like, I hate the smell of smoke. You know, get that shit out of there. So I opened up everything and he's like, go open up the windows and everything, come back and tell me what's going on. So I came back to the phone. I'm like, opened up everything. It's smoking, but the smoke's going out. So he talked to me for a little bit and then. Uh, he said, well, go check on it. Go back down and check on it. And I went down and when I went down, it was like engulfed because I just gave it oxygen.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  You know, I didn't like if I would have just like taken that blanket and like, you know, if he would have just said, go throw that blanket out in the yard. Like game over, but you know, I put it out and then fricking fueled, like open the front door, open the window and just freaking gave that thing.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  What were you burning? Like, like matchsticks? Were you burning like?

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I think I was, uh, just playing flamethrower with a lighter and some aqua net that my sister had.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  And so it, so the, so the whole house burns down.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Everything. Yeah. Everything. And so it was, I mean, I don't really know what kind of conversation my parents had. Because they never, uh, uh, they kind of asked what happened or something, you know? But they never like made me feel horrible about it. And then.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  They just let you, I mean, you must've felt like freaking horrible though.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Oh, still do. I mean, I laugh about it now, but yeah, like I think about, you know? Because like all my dad's, you know, all my dad's military stuff, like every picture he had from, you know? As a child, you know, every, like everything we had, every single thing. I remember it was in the winter. So everything like froze. Like after they put it out and I remember digging through it with my dad, you know, we were like digging through the thing like a couple of days later. Just trying to see what you can find. And I remember we like, we were digging and found this like closet that was in, right inside our front door.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And it had like fallen through and the, like the glass doors were there. And I remember my dad, you know, shucking the glass doors open. And he had a pair of these like lacrosse winter boots and they looked a brand new. And I'll never forget how excited, he's just like, my boots, man. He freaking grabbed him and he's just like, my boots are okay. And I, and I remember like, that was it. Like other than what he had in his, the trunk of his car and what he wore that day, like that was it. So then we. You know, started rebuilding. Naturally, I was a skater and not to mention,

• 13:36Speaker 01

  10 years old, I was

• 13:39Speaker 01

  five foot, 130 pounds. So I was like, short and fat, you know, short and chubby. And so, you know, short and chubby, skater, you know, wasn't an athlete. So then, you know, my dad could tell I was, I was bummed out, you know, and so he kept telling me like, you need to go, just go do something, you know, just, you know, go get active, hang out with your friends, like, you know, he wasn't want me to like, sit around and get depressed about it. So they talked me into going out to like a school dance or something, you know, and this is whatever, fifth grade or something. I remember going and they, they said like, this, hey, the song's dedicated to, to John Dudley and it was burning down the house.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  So one of, one of the kids,

• 14:28Speaker 01

  some Jaco over there sent that one my way.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  That's unfortunately, that's exactly what, that's exactly my mode when I was a kid to be a little freaking savage.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then,

• 14:41Jocko Willink?

  It's amazing though, that your parents recognized that you felt enough guilt on your own without having to just turn the screws on your brain to make you feel even worse about it.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I could have done it. Like, I don't know, I don't know what the conversation was. They've never brought it up. And there's been times where we've talked about the fire, you know, that's kind of how it's referred to. But they've never gone into detail, like my dad's never said like, yeah, man, I knew if I freaking threw that shit on you, you know, it'd crack you or whatever. But what happened was, you know, and you know, maybe this is just my dad's psychology, but uh, what happened was after that dance, my dad knew like, we need to get this guy out of this town. So we moved about 45 minutes away and without him ever tell, like saying anything to me, I knew when I moved, like I need,

• 15:38Speaker 01

  I need to freaking make it right with my dad. So that's when I went and started, I'm just like, you know, he's, I know he's always wanted to be me to be an athlete. So like, I need to get my shit together and start getting into sports.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  And this is how, how old are you?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  I think I was.

• 15:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause you keep saying like 10, 12, 10, 12.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Well.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  There's a big difference between 10 and 12.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the, I think the fire was when I was 10 and then we probably moved when I was 11. Yeah. Cause then by, when I got into junior high school, that's when I'm like, I'm going to be an athlete.

• 16:15Jocko Willink?

  What did it start with? What was the first sport?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Uh, basketball. Um, well, yeah, I think basketball, football.

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  You're just all in.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Basketball, football, running. And then, you know, there was.

• 16:32Jocko Willink?

  You had, you had no experience playing basketball, let's say.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  My dad always shot hoops.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you had a little bit of experience.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  A little bit, but then I started growing. So I was like, I remember at 10, I've got this football card. And it says like, it has your stats on the back and I think my grandma gave me that photo because we didn't have any pictures. You know, going back pre-fire. So I was like five foot, 130 pounds. I was like chubby. Then when I was a freshman, so what is that 13? 12, 12, 13?

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  13 year freshman, I think.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  So then on that, on that one, I was six, three, 130. And then by the time I was senior, I was six, five, 205.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  So I just like stretched out and just looked like this Gumby going up and down the basketball court. You know, my dad's like, I always felt like if you tripped, it'd sound like a chandelier breaking across the ground.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  How much would you probably like, okay, so you get into basketball, do you start saying, cause I mean, that's, that's a, for you to make a transition from like, hey, I'm a skater with freaking whatever. You probably had like the Tony Hawk bangs and stuff like this.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, I did.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  So you had the Tony Hawk bangs, then you're like, all right, I'm gonna be a basketball player. You get a crew cut, you start freaking training. Is it like that kind of, are we talking Rocky, uh, what's that thing called? Montage? Is there a montage going on?

• 18:03Speaker 01

  No, not really, cause I still, I mean, I still liked, you know, getting in trouble and freaking blowing stuff up and, you know, ordering fireworks wherever I could or egging some houses or, you know, whatever kind of mischief. I stole my mom's minivan one time. She had this, she had this Pontiac Transport. You remember those ones? It was like a wedge.

• 18:31Jocko Willink?

  The sloped nose.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause eventually my parents got divorced and I can't remember when it was. It was somewhere, you know, junior high or something like that, but my mom traveled a lot and I was home on my own a lot.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  And so I remember, you know, my mom would have like cars take her to O'Hare. And so I remember one time like, I'm just gonna go take that van out for a rip, you know, and I'm like.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  All the ball washers in, you know, in Illinois went on standby.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm driving around, you know, seventh grade, just driving around my town in this minivan and one of my buddies was on his bike, like driving down the road. So I pull over, I'm like, what's up, man? And he's just like, holy shit, did you steal a car? I'm like, yeah, it's my mom's. And he's just like, ah, and you know, and I, I thought I could drive pretty decent because I had, uh, my dad would never let me get like motorcycles or anything for obvious reasons. But he let me get a boat. He got me a, a 12 foot Boston Whaler with a 25 horse on it. So that's like, I put a thousand miles on that freaking thing, dude. I mean,

• 19:46Speaker 01

  my dad would fill up that little five gallon, five gallon gas can. And the Fox River chain was only a block from my house. We live like right on a channel. So I just drove that boat all the time. So to me, the minivan was gravy, right? No current, you know, didn't have trim tilt like this was, it wasn't a pull start. This was freaking gravy. But I'm sitting there talking to this, this kid and I see someone coming up behind me in the mirror. So I said, I go, hold on, I'll let me freaking whip over, you know? And I remember putting it in reverse and trying to like do a little, you know, whip in.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  But that long beak on the front of that freaking minivan, I ended up swiping this dude's like back pegs and like took him out underneath like the front of the car and like bent the back of his bike up a lot. So then I ended up having a, you know, trade him like my good bike. I had a GT, you know? I had to trade him like a good freaking, a good bike.

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  For the Huffy.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, for this freaking Huffy that he had. And, and I'm just like, you're not gonna say nothing. He said, no, but you know, looking back, you know, if any of our kids rolled in with a brand new freaking GT, you know, with the gyro on it, freaking pegs on the front and back, you'd be like, hey, whose bike did you steal? So anyway, you know, fast forward today, I'm narked out, you know, always. Always that.

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  That kid broke, bro. He broke big time. His dad's like, where the hell did you get that bike? Dobby came, he hit me.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Drove over me in the car. Yeah, it was just, you know, stuff like that.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Then you hear like, wait, John Dobby, that little kid was driving his mom's car. I'm going over there right now.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't think anyone wanted to get close. Cause yeah, I mean, I had. I had freaking straight bangs down here slung it and uh yeah, just I think I think when I got into sport there and originally I didn't want to really play football. I was supposed to play golf. Like my dad said, don't play football. You're not, you know, you're too brittle. Go play golf. And when I went to the high school, like the tough kid in school came up to me and goes, hey, what are you going out for? Cause I was standing in the line and he's and he said, I go, I'm going out for golf. He's like, no, you're going out for football. And I said, no, I'm going out for golf. I have to do golf.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  And I remember he said, uh, well, we need enough guys to scrimmage. And he said, you know, I'm quarterback. So he's like, you're signing up for football or I'm going to beat your ass. So I freaking signed up for football and never told my dad for like until he saw me in the paper.

• 22:38Jocko Willink?

  What do you, what do you see in the paper for?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Well, because I ended up becoming quarterback and like taking that kid's job. So he was saying I would take my golf clubs to school. Cause I'd say like, he's like, how's golf? And I'm, it's all right. But I was playing football because I kind of had to. And I started out as like defensive end and then tight end. And then I think I like chucked a football back. You know, I think I caught a pass and like went in the end zone. And then the coach is like, hey, throw the ball back. And I think I just freaking just huffed it. And you're just like, whoa, you know, wait a minute. So yeah, just one thing led to another and um, just,

• 23:21Speaker 01

  I think, I think I loved, I don't know, just the constant challenge. It, it's hard to describe, but it's like, if I know I'm not good at something, which I really had never fueled that.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Then it didn't keep me coming like I'd get bored with it. But if I, if I wasn't good at it, or if I knew that I had room for improvement, then it, then that's the things that I progressed at. But it just kind of got to the point where no matter really what the sport was, I felt like I could do it above average. And then I honestly, like my body started to change. So it went from like me being like the short, fat skater to now I'm, you know, second tallest kid in the school and, and growing and, you know, becoming an asshole, you know, just kind of being, you're just growing up, just being like overly confident, you know, but I felt, I just felt so much confidence.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Just, it was like gas, just sports for me was just gas. Cause it's like, oh, you want to do track? Okay, go do track.

• 24:31Jocko Willink?

  What did you do in track?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Um, high jump, triple jump.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  Whatever I wanted.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Pretty much, honestly, uh, hundred, two hundred, four hundred.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  And you did good at all of them?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I did for my team, yeah, I did good.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did the coaches like try and keep you focused on one thing? I think you, you, um, like the idea that some people have that the best thing to do with their kid is put them in one sport when they're four years old.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a problem with me.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  And then other people are like, hey, have your kids play a bunch of different sports and it's going to make them more well-rounded in the end.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Well, it's in a way you look at it like functional fitness now. It's proven that, you know, if I would have had more functional fitness in my lifestyle, I would be feeling a little bit better today than I did pre-serf, you know, for the first time with you. Cause like some of my stuff is smoked, probably because it's not like functional fitness. And I'm, I'm a, you know, I feel like the reason I still today do good at just random things I pick up is because, you know, in, when you do different sports, you also get street smarts in athletics, you know? And that's the thing, like there's book smart people and then there's street smarts people.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And as like an employer, I, you know, I'm not, I don't look for a degree. I look for work ethic. And I look for someone that, you know, when they pull up and I look in their car, it's not a frickin' wreck, it's not trashed, you know, and I look for people that have certain types of work ethic qualities. Because for me as an athlete, I feel like even though I wasn't like the pinnacle of all these different sports, I also learned different mechanics and different like, you know, physical smarts from doing a lot of things. And I always, I always wanted to do good enough at it to where I felt like I could put it down and pick it up

• 26:36Speaker 01

  and still like represent it well, you know, if I felt like I, if I did it and looked like an idiot in front of people, I'd want to do it more until I could get it figured out. But my son, you know, coming from England, he was into soccer first. So he came over and, you know, he played soccer quite a bit, but over here soccer's like a one season thing. So once he got into junior high, you know, he tried football and I realized that just wasn't his thing. You know, it, it just wasn't, you know, getting hit and stuff, just wasn't his thing. But he was like always fast, you know, he's always fast and, and he likes, I mean, he,

• 27:19Speaker 01

  he performs at his highest if, especially when he knows someone's pumped about the fact that he just did good. So I ended up talking him into swimming because he did, um, let's see, he did soccer. I knew soccer was coming up. We talked him into cross country and he didn't really like the people. Loved the coach, awesome coach. And then I talked him into going into swimming, went into swimming, had a freaking awesome instructor, military dude, um, super disciplined, swam like, honestly, for how young he was, I was like, okay, these guys are crazy. Two days, like Sharon's getting up at 4:30, having him to the pool at 5:15.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  They'd do an hour practice and then shower and then she'd get him home to feed him before we'd take him to junior, you know, whatever high school or, you know, whichever. So he had a pretty like awesome schedule, I thought, you know, I'm like this guy and he was getting straight A's, which I don't ever remember taking a book home. Like I didn't, I don't even remember being assigned books.

• 28:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, part of it was different back then, bro. It was different back then. Like, I mean, like I didn't do, like I see my kids, my kids will have, and they're older now, but when they were in school, it was like homework every day from day one, from like kindergarten on through high school, hours and hours and hours of homework. I never did homework. Homework was not a thing. And I, I, wait, now let me rephrase that. It was a thing. It did exist. I knew that it was a thing in existence, but it wasn't a thing that I was doing, right? It wasn't like, oh, it's, you know, it's the afternoon, I'm gonna do homework now. It was like the afternoon, I'm going to throw rocks at shit.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  That was, that was where I was at. So what, what sports did you end up playing? Cause I know I, like you rattled off one time to me, you're like, oh, I did freaking wrestling, I did basketball, I did football, I did baseball, I did tennis, I did freaking, you did everything?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you just named them all. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I did, I did quite a bit. I wrestled a year, um, mainly because I did basketball, really didn't like the coach and just, I'm like, I freaking hate this guy. So then I went and wrestled and coming into wrestling as a sophomore and we had a really good wrestling school too. Like both the Guidas are from.

• 29:50Jocko Willink?

  That's right. Yeah, you told me that.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like Jason was my guard and, and Clay was, um, a little bit younger, but you know, we had a really.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  How fired up was Clay Guida when he was 14?

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  Dude, he's thirty whatever right now and he's still fired up.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Let me just tell you, Clay, or uh, well, Jason was, Jason was like on a clay level, but like more, like more of a gorilla, you know, Clay gives Jason a lot of credit for, for being a savage and trust me, he was, um, every game, he like, before every game, he'd take a mouthpiece out of a packet and we'd put it on his helmet and then he was like my pulling guard and I remember like by fourth quarter, I'd be like grabbing his mask. I'd normally like grab his face mask to, to like call plays and I'd look and it would just be like the plastic piece like, cause he would chew him.

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  He would just gnaw through it like a savage.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  Mouthpiece and his eyeballs were like this big around.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Wait, this is Jason or Clay?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Jason, yeah, Jason. And I remember, uh, I remember one time like him and, him and his brother lived in a, a part of town that was like, you know, um, I don't know, there's a lot of savages over that way. You know, there's like a lot of like wrestlers came from that group of town. There's a lot of badasses over there. And I remember one time like, uh, Jason came to practice and he was kind of pissed because he was like chainsawing something on his garage and the chainsaw kicked back and hit him in the top of the head and like chainsawed his head open. And dude, he just threw his football helmet on and freaking got after it.

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  Dude, like that right there. I was just on a, on.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Jason, Jason and I wrestled the same, the same weight class.

• 31:51Jocko Willink?

  Which was what?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Well, I think one seventy-one in our sophomore year, but he was like way better.

• 31:59Jocko Willink?

  I was just on, uh, Jordan Peterson's podcast a little while ago and he was like talking to me. I was like talking about how like when you're a young kid, and it's not everybody, but you just want to like fight and go. And that's my picture, when you picture him just gnawing apart his freaking mouthpiece and his eyes are all big. This kid needs to go to combat somewhere. Like that's what he's meant to do.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  And he did. And he, and he did.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  So, so you wrestled for what, a year?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, wrestled for a year.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  But it's, look, I don't care how good of an athlete you are, you roll into wrestling and did you not just get like crushed?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:37Jocko Willink?

  You can't catch up, you know?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  No, I wrestled, yeah, I wrestled, uh, I wrestled JV and I mean, they were, that we were a wrestling school. Like, you know, we, we had, we had some really good wrestling coaches and yeah, it was, it was tough. It was tough, but I really, I was still like getting into my body, honestly, cause I stretched up so high. And so I didn't have a lot of coordination, but I had work ethic, you know? That's one of the things before, like before I go down that route, like with multi-sport thing with my son. He did swimming after cross country and then when he got to soccer, like he started, the coach wasn't playing him.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  But at practice, this, this coach was taking weeks to try to condition the other player. But Harry would be out there just running circles around people because he just got off of cross country, followed by swim season. Followed by now it's soccer season, you're just running around on some grass, you know? So he, for him, it was nothing. And I, I remember after like three or four games of watching the coach just bypass him.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  I kind of pulled the coach to the side after practice and I said, hey, I said, is there anything I should be working with Harry on? So he can get more game time. And he just said, well, I don't like single player, you know? He said, I want soccer players. Harry's too distracted with other sports. And I was just like.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Really?

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  You know, I said, I deal with a lot of coaches on pretty high levels. And I said, I've never known a coach to not want an athlete on the team. I'm like, this, this kid's an athlete.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, an athlete as opposed to a sports specific one trick, one trick pony.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, and so, yeah, right then I just kind of told Harry like, I don't think soccer is your thing. So he went into track and, you know, did cross country, track and swam four years, even though he didn't like it, you know, still did it. And then, you know, ended up going to college to run and, and still gets awesome grades and runs and does all that stuff. And he's kind of like, like I was, but a little bit later, he's like now getting into his, into his body to where, and he's also hit a new gear of competitiveness, which is really cool to see because I hit that way earlier.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  You know, I would get, probably what held me back athletically is I would get really pissed off. You know, it's like, once I started to compete, I hadn't ever been taught the management of like, you know, raging out when you like made a bad play or threw an interception or something. And that, that actually transpired all the way into my archery career. And then luckily, um, an Olympic coach like helped that. That was a big turning point in my career, like in my twenties, when I got taught like how to get, you know, how to not let the arrows in my quiver that haven't been shot yet be affected by the ones that already have and that you can't get back. You know, that's kind of how it was put to me.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  So that really helped, but in high school. I think by the time I hit, you know, junior and senior year, I just started to, I just started to feel way more confident in what I was doing and, you know, size wise, you know, I was a totally different person than than what I was.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  So what ended up being like the sport?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Football for sure. Yeah. Football was was the sport and for me, um, I've always struggled with sleep. You know, I've always just, you know, been an insomniac. And I also, one of the things that kept me awake was knowing if someone else was like having more time to train than me. So, you know, I was

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  Welcome to my world.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was like in high school, by my senior year, you know, I was like substituting any non elective class that I had or all my study halls for like extra gym. So I'd go to like four gym classes. And then I had my, my football coach gave me a key to the, to the gymnasium. So when I couldn't sleep at night and my mom would be gone, you know, I was home, I was home alone a lot, you know, I had, my mom would just sign the checkbook for me to like order Domino's, you know? And whenever I woke up, I'd go to the high school, go in there and I had, you know, my coach gave me this huge bag of footballs when I was a sophomore and just said like, these are yours until you

• 37:34Speaker 01

  graduate. And so I'd just go to the gym and I'd pull the laundry baskets, you know, out of the locker rooms and I'd just throw, you know, from corner of the gym to corner of the gym. I'd just run like three step drills and just like run 73 passes into those or then into garbage cans or then eventually just like throwing into the basketball hoop and then just doing like three step drops, five step drops, seven step drops, rollouts and just, and then it got to the point where it's like I memorized what I needed to do, but then I memorized what the lineman needed to do. And then every, you know, like every player on the field, it's like this is, you know, I knew the playbook front and back.

• 38:14Jocko Willink?

  And how good, how good was your team?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Sucked. Horrible.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  How'd you guys do senior year?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Horrible. You know, just really underperformed at all the camps. We were awesome because at camps.

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  How should you have done? I mean, were you from like a weak school, a weak football school? Or you from a good football school and you guys were just playing shitty?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  No, you know, it it's kind of like, um, it's kind of like when you, I forget what podcast it was, but or maybe it's in your book when you were talking about, um, through buds, there were the two teams of the two different boats. You know, I remember like one of the sayings my football coach always would have, he'd be like, you know, bring the boat in, you know? He always would say like, the boat's lost. He's like, it's your job to bring the boat in, you know? And he was like,

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  Your job meaning you, John Dudley?

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're the quarterback.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was responsible for every mistake we made, you know? If we screwed around and practice got shut off early, he would, he would like pull me back and tell me like, you're going to run laps for every person here that screwed off today. And today there was, you know, we freaking forty six minutes early, we quit practice. I want forty forty six laps, you know? It'd be like stuff like that. But we had a small group of people for like seven on seven camps that were at all the, they were at all the camps. They, I would call them and say, let's go practice. But there was, and we at seven on seven, we were great.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  But there was, you know, four other people that weren't being included and then the entire defense. So we were just, we had really good pieces, but nothing ever like flowed as a team.

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you do good enough? Did you get looked at by colleges?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the first college, I think the first college that looked at me was Ball State when I was a sophomore. I remember at the end of my sophomore year, I went to Ball State with my mom. And that was like, that lit a totally different fire. Cause then I realized like, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go somewhere. And so, you know, I,

• 40:30Speaker 01

  My dad, even though my parents were split, my dad was at every freaking game. And he was quite a ways, you know, he kind of moved to a different town. But he came to every game and yeah, I mean, my life was, was sport. Sport and training. I mean, I loved, I loved lifting camps like in the summertime. It was every football camp I could sign up for. And honestly, my mom's like, you know, she was so, you know, involved with, with her position at Baxter. To where she's like, yeah, if you want to, you know, go somewhere for a month in the summer, do it, you know? Cause I think she probably just, you know, was managing plants in Puerto Rico or Singapore,

• 41:15Speaker 01

  wherever the heck, you know, she was for her job. So I just, I did not miss an opportunity to like, go to a camp or something like that.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  So did you actually get recruited to go when you, in your senior year to go to college?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were several and I, I ended up choosing, I wanted to go back. My dad was moving back to North Carolina. My uncle was in North Carolina. And one of the coaches at Western Carolina played with my dad. And, you know, we ended up going out there and it was kind of a decision that I would be close to, to the Dudley family out that way. And I liked the idea of like getting, honestly, I never really felt like that town was home. You know, and maybe it's because like, you know, my parents were kind of always split. I saw my mom limited, you know, when she wasn't traveling.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  But we, like, we traveled away from, like, me and my mom were together more when we'd go places. Cause she'd say, hey, you know, I've got a. I've got a meeting in Salt Lake for two days. Do you want to come with me? And I'd say, oh, can I go to, I've been wanting to check out Snowbird? And she's just like, yeah, you know, so we'd fly out there and she'd say, the bus will pick you up in the morning at seven and they'll bring you back to, you know, just make sure you're back here at this time. So I'd just go up and then I started, you know, skiing, shredding, loved skiing, worked at a little ski hill up there and skied bumps like all the time in the, in the wintertime and it's cool. So then what, what happened with college then?

• 42:57Speaker 01

  So I was gonna play football and like, the one thing that I haven't talked about was back at age 10, when I was a super punk, um, my uncle and my grandfather got me into like hunting deer. When we'd go down to Mississippi, we'd go back down there to see family for Thanksgiving. And so, you know, they were like, you know, we need to get you out in the woods. And my grandpa was all, you know, Korean War veteran and he's like, you know, we need to make a man of you because I'm showing up with fricking Tony Hawk haircut and freaking earrings and, you know, stuff like, stuff like that. So he's out there,

• 43:41Speaker 01

  you know, making me sit in fire ant beds and, you know, just trying to like make a man out of this fricking softie that's coming down. And so, you know, I got into hunting and just loved it. Like it was, and, and honestly, probably because it was hard and it like took a ton of patience and it was very different from being able to just screw off, you know? And, and so it was, it was the first kind of form of competition in a way, just that it took a lot of moving parts to be successful. So, you know, when I got my first deer, it, it was like winning my first trophy, right? I mean, I was totally

• 44:24Speaker 01

  hooked at how freaking awesome it was. And just seeing my family like, oh my gosh, you got a deer. And then we ate it and everything, you know, and it was just this thing. So every year for Thanksgiving, I was looking forward to going back home and doing that. And I got into bow hunting, I think when I was, the first year I hunted, they gave me, I had a gun. And then, um, when I was 10 is when I started shooting a bow and bow hunting. So that was, once a year that was happening. But then I got a little bit better towards the end of my senior year. I was shooting a lot more around home, like I was practicing and stuff a lot. Cause again, I had a lot of free time, you know, my mom would be gone.

• 45:10Jocko Willink?

  You had no homework.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no homework. If I wasn't like cutting grass, like, you know, for five bucks a lawn, then that's what I was doing. But I ended up driving down this road. I actually had to hurt my knee. So I was, I was, I moved into college a little bit early. And hurt my knee and then I forget what happened, but I, I was at home back by my mom's. For some reason I was just driving around on this, like a back road. And I think I was coming, I think.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  So you went to college?

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was, I moved in, I moved in and I'm talking like there a week. Maybe, maybe a week and a half.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  And you.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And on a weekend.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  You hurt your knee at some point.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:57Jocko Willink?

  And so you're not really able to play.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  And so for whatever reason you go back home.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we did some, we did some like run-throughs. I know I did some stuff with like, you know, I remember wearing like pants, jersey, helmet, you know, just doing like dry runs and stuff. But I wasn't, I don't, I never like hit, really hit helmets, you know, in college. And so it was the weekend, I went back and saw my mom and then I drove. I think I went up to the ski hill just to, you know, go up there and say hi to some people that worked up in the summer. And on my way back, I took some back roads back home. And I went by this little town called Ringwood and I saw this sign on the, on the side of the road that just said archery shoot.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Like spray painted on a board and just had an arrow like pointing that way. So I went down that road and I'm like, what's this all about, you know? Yeah, had my.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  Down this road, yes, you did.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Went down the road and I said, what's this all about? And they're like, oh, we got a, you know, 40 target course and you know, here's how the scoring works on the animal, you know, it's 3D animal targets. I had never seen 3D animal targets. I'd always like shot at bales of hay and stuff like that. So I went out and freaking halfway through the course, I was out of arrows. I had freaking shot the woods down. And I remember leaving the course, got in my car, went back up to Willmont, Wisconsin, uh, which was where the ski hill was, but there's also a Gander Mountain Outlet store

• 47:36Speaker 01

  there. Went in and bought more arrows like in a rage and went back to finish the, cause I didn't want to not finish the course. So I bought more arrows to go back to finish. By the time I'd like finished, everything was pretty much done and they were having the award ceremony and the guys that were up on that podium all had these shirts that had like their local shop on the shirt. So I remember this was on a Sunday and on Monday morning, like when they, I think they opened at one o'clock, but at one o'clock I was at that shop. Just like, when are those guys coming in that, you know, won

• 48:17Speaker 01

  this weekend? And I just started standing there and watching these people shoot and ask questions. And I was there a few days, just kind of being a stalker. And, and the owner of the archery shop,

• 48:34Speaker 01

  called me to the side and said, hey kid, what are you, what are you doing? I said, I'm just, I'm watching, I'm watching. And he said, well, come in the back room. I need you for a minute. And he took me in the back room and he said, I forgot to get this guy's arrows done. He goes, have you ever built arrows? And I said, no, sir. And he goes, okay, well, here's how you do it. And he said, you know, you're going to clean this feather like this, then you're going to put the glue on it. You put it in this clamp and then you stick it down. And he's like, you know, set this timer and then move on to this next jig and do a second arrow. And then when you get to the six, you can go back to the first. If the timer's gone off, you rotate it. And so I just sat in this room and

• 49:15Speaker 01

  fletched this guy's arrows and then kind of came out and I said like, I got him, you know. So he came out and gave the guy his arrows and um the guy just said, "All right, do those ones." And he had just this buckets of arrows that needed to get done. So I just started fletching arrows and then the next day he's like, "Have you ever worked on a bow?" And I said, "No, I haven't." And he's like, "All right, well, let me show you how to change a string." And, you know, and then he's like, "Hey, you know, if they're, if these bows are here for maintenance, you know, here's the checklist. You gotta, you know, clean these axles. You gotta wax the string and melt it in with this." And just

• 49:55Speaker 01

  started showing me and honestly, after probably two weeks of doing that, um, I, I ended up telling the guy, I said, "Hey, am I gonna get a paycheck?" And he's just like, I remember, the guy's name was Mike Donovan, some people in the archery industry, like old timers, they still remember him because he was, he was a pretty hardcore archery manager at the time. But he goes, "You can't put value on what I'm teaching you right now." And I remember, I'm like, "No, sir, you can't, but I can't put gas in my tank, you know, with experience." So he, uh, he's like, "I'll give you a four-ten an hour." And I'm

• 50:36Speaker 01

  just like, "Oh, yeah." You know, I was freaking pumped. And I remember going home to my dad and I went to my dad's- Home to North Carolina or whatever? Well, my dad at that time, I think was, yeah, he was still in Rockford, Illinois. And I remember telling my dad, um, "Hey, I'm not gonna go to college to play ball because I've, you know, I've got this archery thing going and it's, it's a good, it's good." He's like, "You're like, Dad, four-ten an hour." I did. He, because I remember, you know, again, he's always been super logical and

• 51:18Speaker 01

  he's also like tried not, he never really told me like, at that point, he'd never said like, "What's wrong with you?" Or, you know, "That's a terrible decision." But in that instance, he's like, "I, I really feel like you need to make your own decisions and you need to know like what to do." He said, "But..."

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I have to say, I think this is a terrible decision. And I think for my 40th birthday, he wrote me this really long birthday card and like in there, he said, he's like, you could have not done a better job of proving me wrong. Cause he's like, he goes, he goes, I can't believe, I can't believe what you've done in like 22 years type thing, you know?

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  Hey, what, when you went to that 3D shoot for the first time on the, on the side of the road or whatever, what do you think it, what feeling did you have? What was it that just freaking was like, this is it? Uh, yeah, like I listened to Ted Nugent on Rogan and like he gives some crazy description of like launching an arrow. It's all poetic and everything.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, did you, is that what you, you were just like?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  No, never had that. For me, it was, I couldn't like, the fact that I knew it, that was a, that showed me how inferior I was with a bow and arrow and I loved hunting. And it showed me that there was every person that was in that parking lot was a lot better than me and that was a problem. And, and that a hundred percent was, you know, I had to go to the shop. I had to learn. And then it's like, I'm not going to leave until I beat these guys. These guys that are winning, like I need to beat them. And then once I did that, it was,

• 53:14Speaker 01

  you know, I remember I, I did really well, did well fast. And I remember going to a shoot that was about 45 minutes away to the north. And I remember going in there and my name was like written down on a piece of paper that was like at this registration desk. And these are rinky dinks, like local shoots, you know? I don't know if like you have like local surf tournaments where it's not like, you know? So I just said, oh, what's up with that name you got right there? And they're like, oh, uh, this guy is supposed to be a serious cheater.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  So when he comes, we're going to send someone out with him. And I go, oh, well, that's me. Who's coming?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  And

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so they were thinking this because you had been doing well?

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I kinda came from nowhere. So these, these people that that was their thing. Um, they're just like, where did this guy come from? Who, who even is he? You know, they'd never seen me even at a local club. You know, cuz I was just nothing. And then went as I always do, you know, oh, I'm not good at this. Then just like head first into the deep end like.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  Were you shooting arrows at night, waking up in the morning, shooting arrows like just full on, full on obsession immediately?

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, like, you know, had to

• 54:43Speaker 01

  like sat around after tournaments and would like take down courses for places if they'd give me a target. So I'd have another target, you know, or, you know, I would freaking cut grass or clean the bottoms of people's boats or whatever. So I could buy another target and then, you know, I had to have an entire range to practice on. And then it just, you know, and then I wanted like a colored target bow and then it just, it's just like, it's me. It's just me. It's who I am all the time. It just, you know, I had to like, I had to get good at it. But then there came a point where, um, and actually at that tournament was kind of a turning point because.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  This is the cheater one?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I went out, did, I ended up winning that tournament and they had someone like writing score. And I said, um, I go, well, that was kinda nice just having someone else keep score. I'm like, hopefully you'd keep score for these other guys that have a problem, you know? Cuz it's called like pencil pushing, you know? And they just said, well, if you don't want to deal with that, you could always go to nationals where there's two scorekeepers. And so I'm just like, where's that? So then I went to the national triple crown and slept in the back of my truck. And, you know, shot at that and sucked at it horribly. But then the next year, you know, I, instead of going like two, I went to all of them, drove to all of them

• 56:12Speaker 01

  and just got better and got better. And then within like five years, I was at a level that was, you know.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  That I was happy with, but I was also still refining it, you know, just there's, that's what's cool about archery is I think the reason I'm still doing it is because, you know, I still find,

• 56:36Speaker 01

  if I'm not centered, then it shows. So it's hard, like you're never going to have a perfect game to where you can just back away and know that like, okay, that was a Cinderella story. I'm done because you can go have a perfect round, but then an hour later.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  You gotta shoot another one.

• 56:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. Yep.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  How do you cheat in archery?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there's just, there's groups where, you know, at like a local tournament, they're not going to send a scorekeeper out. So let's just say like, we all went out with our wife. There's definitely people that, you know, they would shoot down there and score like an eight, but they just like write a 10. And meanwhile, like the wives and kids are just like not giving a crap about what's going on. But then you just turn in your scorecard and, you know, just. But once you get into like the professional events, there's two people that keep score. The majority of the group has to agree on the arrow call.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  And then if there's ever a divide, then you call an official scorekeeper to come and call it, which is kind of a big reason why I liked progressing, because once I was shooting like internationally, you know, they had like, you couldn't even have an arrow judge that was from your country. So if you, you know, it's like if an American needed an arrow call, someone would come over, like an official judge from another country would come over because obviously now there's teams competing against teams. So, you know, these judges had schooling on how to call an arrow and, you know, stuff like that.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  So how does that go? Like, you know, I enter the tournament and then what? I just shoot them at my own pace kind of thing and keep my own score?

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  I think what's good, what might be confusing you, Echo, is like the first tournaments that he's talking about are just like, kind of like local.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  It'd be like you going to Balboa.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  It's like going to like a little jujitsu tournament somewhere and there's not like judges. You know what I'm saying? Where a jujitsu tournament, like an in-house jujitsu tournament? Like when you have, like at Victory, you have an in-house jujitsu tournament. There's no like escalating the call that the point keep, you know, it's like, hey, man, you lost, whatever. You did good. Someone could be like, oh, yeah, you know, you're not getting points on that sweep. So these are just like local little tournaments where you go out and you score and you're like, you know, my, my eight's pretty close to a 10. And I'm going to give it to myself.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  So there's no one watching?

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Cause you're like on a path through, like through this course to where it's not like golf, like professional golf, there'd be like a crowd following like those leaders through that course. Which in professional archery, like that happens. And then once you get into shooting in the finals, a lot of times it's like on monitors and everything. So obviously people can see on a big screen where the arrows are landing. So, I mean, probably the same in competitive like rifle and stuff like that.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's the same in competitive anything. Like really, like when you're at a local tournament or whether it's freaking bowling, you know? Like over the line, you know, market zero, they're just having an argument, you know? It's like you can cheat.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  And then, but then you turn in like a score card or something. So when you shoot, you, you score however many points and then you write it on the card and then go what to the next target or something? And then you go through a course and at the end you turn in the card.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be like you playing cribbage with someone at home and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I won. They're like, well, wait a minute. Dude, we have to be at least even. You're like, no, I was keeping score. Like here's how it looked. Or you go to Vegas and play cribbage and like, you know, everything you're doing is under, you know, a magnifying glass type thing.

• 1:00:28Jocko Willink?

  So what point did you make the transition or was it the whole time from like 3D archery to target archery?

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  I got, I honestly got a little bit bored in 3D archery pretty fast. And part of the, part of what I didn't like about it, there's just.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  I felt like I was going to the same places all the time because there was, I'm trying to think, I turned pro in 98, so by like 2003, I just felt like I would land, know how to get to the shoot without even like, wouldn't even need to like to look at a map. I'd just know where to go. And then you go to these courses and it would be like, well, a lot like, you know, we shot Big Sky together, you know, for the Total Archery Challenge and we've shot the same course because it ends in a good place, you know. But there's certainly targets that you like, you would be

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  like, oh, last year we had the white bunny right here, you know. And so it got to the point where it was like that. I was going to places where I'm, you know, 26 or 30 weekends a year, I'm traveling to, to do tournaments. And it just felt super repetitive. And in the end, I realized there's probably 10 or 12 people that are fully capable of winning like any weekend. But it's almost like if you have that same tournament, you know, two consecutive days over and over and over again, there's probably like five that would win it differently each

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  of those times. And I don't know, it just came, it, it just got to be stale for me. I got, you know, I just really got bored with that. And it got to the point where I pretty much had it set in my mind of, I'm a target archer to be a better bow hunter, you know. And that was like my mentality is I was just, I could barely be focused by the time the world championships rolled around in August. I barely cared because I just wanted to be hunting in September. And, you know, that, the hunting was always the focus for me. And it was like, I almost, I got more

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  out of it. So, you know, I just eventually, I did what I needed to do in competitive archery to like, help me build a platform to where I really wanted to go, which is, I've always liked to, to coach, you know, and,

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  And I've always liked really good coaches, you know, I've liked, I'm the type of person where I liked coaches that like honestly, that like yelled at me and were like,

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Harry's head coaches were, you know, Sharon said, "That guy's just a dick." Like I'd, I kind of think I would love that guy, you know? If he like grabbed my face mask and he's yelling at me, like it would make me do better on the next play. Whereas now as an adult, I've learned there's certain people where if you did that, you're not getting that result.

• 1:03:39Jocko Willink?

  Freaking breakdown.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:44Jocko Willink?

  So, so wait a second. So you're doing the target archer thing and then, or sorry, you're doing the 3D thing. Then you start doing target archery. Like, and what, like, at what point are you part of Team USA and you're putting on the Team USA stuff?

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  Dang, man. I don't like have my whole life outlined. So, um, I had retired, I, you know, I got sick of it. I retired. And I was working at a bow manufacturer, you know, didn't go back to that, but at 18, you know, I started working for this archery shop, didn't like the one-on-one experience that that archery shop owner was giving people buying new equipment. And I was spending a lot of time with people. And so I got called in and he told me, you know, hey, do not spend that much time with people when they buy new gear. If they go over 15 minutes, they need to be paying coaching time per hour. And I just said, well, this, you know, no one was in the shop and I didn't have anything else to do.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Why wouldn't we help this guy out? And I remember he said, "Well,

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  if you want to run a business that way, then you need to go start your own archery shop." So I just thought, oh, okay. And so I went and started my own archery shop about 45 miles away. It was actually our, my family had a, had a horse ranch in southern Wisconsin at the time, my mom and my sister. So I ended up building a pole building there and starting my own shop. And that was the same time I started shooting professionally. And then got offered a job from a bow manufacturer to move to northern Wisconsin to, you know, come in as like an early sales rep. So I ended up working for this bow company and competing. So, I mean, my life was archery.

• 1:05:35Jocko Willink?

  Archery and archery.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  20 hours a day. And then I kind of got burned out with it and I found myself liking going fishing or going hunting or just doing something that wasn't like training, training, training for archery. And then,

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  I had retired for like a few months.

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  Retired from?

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  I kind of just said, I'm not going to shoot professionally anymore. And I just stepped away and I was doing some coaching at like, I was doing a lot for some different like youth camps and stuff. And I remember seeing another archer at like, at a trade show and he, and he said something about, you know, I heard you're not shooting anymore. And I just said, yeah, I got, you know, bored with it. And I kind of just jokingly said, you know, maybe I'll come over to Target Archery. Cause 3D archery is all like foam animal targets with molded in scoring rings.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Um, ranging from, you know, the size of a dime, you know, up to like what would be considered just the vitals, which would be bigger. Uh, but then Target-

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  Like a dinner plate size.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then for Target Archery, there's several different formats and that's bullseyes, you know, with scoring rings, but.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  A lot of different games to play, right? You know, there's tons of different formats of shooting at a bullseye target, different distances. Some, you don't know the distance, you have to estimate it. Some have like multiple sized faces. Some are certain amount of arrows at this distance, certain amount at that distance, that distance. But anyway, I said to this guy, yeah, maybe I'll just, I don't know, maybe I should just try target archery. And I remember, he looked at me and goes, come on in, the water's fine.

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, famous last word.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  And that was it. I was like, okay, when's the first tournament? And the first, he told me the first tournament was at the Arizona Cup. And at the Ben Avery, did you ever shoot at the Ben Avery Center in Arizona? So that was the first one and ended up, you know, ended up in the medal, you know, gold medal match with that guy at that event.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  With that guy?

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  With that guy.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  In your first event?

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one. And I showed up, like, everything I had was wrong. Cause you know, there's, I don't know how to describe it. It'd be like if you did, you know, tactical, you know, tactical competition and then someone asks you to go to a sniper event and then you like, showed up with your M4 or something, you know, I don't know.

• 1:08:18Jocko Willink?

  No, it's, it's mission specific.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  They're both archery, but one of them has, like, you're standing around, you got more time to shoot or whatever, less time to shoot. Your gear's gonna be different, the whole nine yards.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I remember

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  right before that medal match, and as it happened, I was low in the brackets. He was, you know, very high in the brackets, but we were on opposite ends of the brackets. And so at this center, you know, there's, you know, it's, let's say it's 100 yards wide. I was like at this end and he was at that end. And as you shoot against someone and go through the brackets, you just come to the middle. So like, when I won my semifinal match, I remember like looking over and I, you know, I saw that he won. I'm like, okay, here we go. And he comes over and he said, man, he's like, how, I see, he said, how, how are you dealing with it? And I said, dealing with what?

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  And he said, uh, well, I've won this nine times and, you know, everyone wants me to lose. And he said, so I can imagine like, you know, the pressure you're feeling, you know, being that guy. And I said, man, I, I see it the other way. And he goes, what do you mean? I said, dude, I'm out here. My equipment's a joke. I said, I'm out here, I'm a 3D shooter. I got the wrong freaking bow. I got the wrong arrows, never even shot this far. And I said, and I'm getting ready to roll up on you. And I, and I'm like, you won this nine times? And honestly, I could see like, that was, you know, that cracked him. And I ended up getting the gold medal there.

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you, so the first time you won it?

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking nuts. So then I guess that pretty much kicked off your target archery.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So we, um, and there was a lot of, like, that kicked off my target archery. So I did one type, then I did another type. And then I went into field archery, which is my favorite. It's kind of like the TAC, but with, with different sized bullseyes. And granted, you know, in the pro class, these guys aren't missing. It's like, you need perfect scores, you know, you really do. And I went to this field, um, this field tournament and just sucked at it. Because half of it is marked, the other half is unmarked.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  So you unmarked, meaning unknown distance.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Unknown distance, which in archery is a problem if you don't know the distance. Cause your arrow is way slower than a bullet. So, um, I wasn't good at it and ended up buying myself an entire field round. And like, you know, reading up on, you know, target faces and then.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Ended up figuring out a mathematical formula to estimate distances using like the circles in my scope and the circles of the bull's eye. So I'd like frame the side of my scope to the edge of the target and then I memorized where my center dot would be based on the rings. And just memorized a gauging, a distance gauging formula, which is what everybody does, but most people keep it secretive on how, you know, what their system is. Um, but because of the targets are all regulation, they have to be the same size, you can figure it out.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  So then, um, I got good at that, you know, and, and that was kind of my favorite. And then, you know, made, made a team, made a US team. And then went over and competed. I think my first international tournament was in Croatia and, you know, freaking just loved medaled there and, you know, loved freaking, when they pulled that American flag up and like you got to hear your anthem, it was just like, okay. This is freaking, this is awesome.

• 1:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so how long did that career run for?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  That career ran until the archery, World Archery decided to do a World Cup. And they decided to make the World Cup. Um, so at the World Cup, I think only two at the year, at the time it was maybe two or three archers. You had to be on, on a team, um, would shoot in the World Cups, but whoever the finalists, the top four were at the end of the World Cup. Then you had to go to the World Cup finals, which was like a big thing. And they decided to add one tournament and move the World Cup finals. It was like September 15th this year.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  And so I remember, um, World Archery telling me, you know, hey, if you're going to shoot on the World Cup team, you have to give us the commitment that you will not only do all four World Cups, but if you make the World Cup final, that you will also participate in the World Cup final. Otherwise we're going to find someone. That will, you know, because we don't want to like end up making a final and then someone don't, can't get off work or whatever. And so I, you know, as in September, I just said, I am not competing in archery in September.

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  And for everyone that doesn't know, September is freaking prime. That's hunting season.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  That's when you, you're only thinking about, you're thinking about one thing and one thing only.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Just freaking hunting. That's it.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  And so you kind of walked.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, walked.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Now.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  I walked for, I walked from there and then, you know, I ended up business wise.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Started consulting, went out on my own, started consulting, you know, started a family, Sharon and I, you know, it was like, I wanted to be home more. A lot more people could come to me, you know, for coaching and stuff. And I was, I was coaching around the world at that time. But yeah, just, you know, life changes. You become thirty, you know, close to thirty. It's just, you know, I didn't. I just didn't see the future that I wanted, just being a target archer my whole life. You know, and I think, you know, we talked about this. I think some fighters are in that same position of like,

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  yeah, you love it and you know, you can go win like fight of the night and you could make a pretty good paycheck for that time. But the reality is like, your one or two fights a year that you're going to make a paycheck at, they're going to make ninety-eight percent of the rest of your life, not as, you know, not what you could make for it if you had a different focus. So, you know, I just, I just focused on something else.

• 1:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, from a business perspective, did you have the vision of like knock on archery? Cause essentially what you do is freaking give away an incredible amount of knowledge and information and instruction. That's what you do. That, did you know from the beginning, hey, listen, if I just give this stuff away, then people will, you know, want, want to buy some of the stuff that I recommend, utilize some of the equipment that I make? Is that, did you have that vision or did it just start to happen?

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  It's hard to say if I was in a different position then if I would have felt that way because I don't feel like I'm greedy. I feel like the better I do for myself in other avenues of life, the more I can give back to my sport and I want to because you know, I feel like hey, I'm doing fine. I you know, and I want to help other people be better. But the truth of the matter is, you know, when you're in your twenties making 30 grand a year or 50 grand a year at your job, and you're trying to go to tournaments to win an extra 10 on the weekend and you're putting a lot of time in and you're shooting 20 to 30,000 arrows, you know, a year and living out it, you

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  know, sharing rooms with people and stuff like that. Like, there's a lot of stepping stones that have to, there's a lot of sacrifices you make before it gets to the point where it's like, you know, you could offer all that for free. But once, once the community and I, and by that, I mean, you know, I refer to them as the knock on nation. Once, once we had a pedestal to where we were able to, to deliver our information and our community came in and started supporting that initiative, then it allows me, you know, the more people support like either things that

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  we offer at the store, or let's say I do a training series, and there's a training series that helps someone do better, but maybe there's a product that we have as our business, you know, that'll be in there. And I know not everyone's going to buy it. But if someone does, you know, if they really like that series and it was worth, you know, a hundred bucks to them, I would rather, instead of them paying the subscription to like, support us with, you know, a product that we have that I, that I personally believe in for that particular thing. Now, everyone has their, has their preference, but. I don't think I could have done it that way to begin with, even though when I was

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  kind of hustling and doing what I could to like, you know, build, I would always go and do youth camps or go do Christian camps and do stuff like that for free. Like, I always did that. I always worked with, you know, the kids after the tournament or,

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  you know, it, it kind of got to the point where I told sponsors, especially when I went out and I was kind of consulting, I told sponsors, I would like to travel through Europe and go to every archery club and do a seminar, but, you know, I can't pay for it myself. Would you, you know, would you like to be the one that sponsors the event in Dusseldorf, you know, and if so, send me 25 of your hats and some keychains or whatever, and that's what we'll put on everyone's seat that, you know, that comes. And so we just do these tours where I'd have magazine editors drive me all around Europe and every day was a different stop, you know, just kind of like a band. Every day was a different archery club.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Stop, teach archery and then, you know, do it. In the end, I made something more because, you know, the sponsors were paying something and, you know, getting some exposure from it. And then I also did a lot of writing, you know, I did a lot of, a lot of written coaching first because like getting your foot in the door when you don't technically have like a name for yourself yet is a little bit of a struggle, but I saw a lot of magazines needing fresh content. And so, you know, I just started writing. So from like 2000, I would say from 2005 to probably 2000.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  12 or 14, I was, I wrote for like seven different languages. I'd probably do about 250 pages a year, just in articles. And honestly, my thing was I'd send these articles out. I didn't really make hardly anything off any of the articles. I just always made sure that they used my photo content. So that, you know, I was able to give exposure to the brands that I represented. And so, you know, it was just, it's kind of like the perfect storm of having enough support to where I could grow into where I wanted to be. And then, you know, then eventually like Knock On,

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Knock On's like evolved. Originally, it was a TV show. It was just a hunting show. But it was a hunting show that I was very focused on having educational portions. I didn't like B-roll in hunting shows. You know, I didn't, I always thought there needs to be more education and how to and why was this hunt successful? Or here's the equipment that I'm taking on this hunt. You know, I changed arrows or changed broadheads. Here's the why. You know, here's different mistakes you can make as a bow hunter for shooting technique. So that was, that kind of gave us the platform to, to create a name for ourself. And then obviously, you know, we've just continually

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  built. We, meaning I've only ever done the content. The brand was always Sharon. You know, the brand and, you know, knockonarchery.com has always been Sharon. Whereas, you know, I really don't like that side of things. I just really want to like, I want to teach people from my experience of, of whatever's happening in the moment. How'd the TV show come about? The TV show came because Um, one of the companies that I worked for was an archery company. And so each year they would pick a certain demographic and tell me to focus my initiatives there to grow the brand in that demographic.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  So one time it was, you know, South Africa, another time it was like Germany, another time it was Australia, but it came around to Canada. And so I went up and talked to a lot of shops up there and said, you know, hey, what do you guys think about doing like a seminar tour? Like what was working for me in other demographics? Because over there, people were jumping on that because no one would travel over there to do that. Maybe it's like that with jujitsu. If a reputable coach travels to somewhere where they're never going to see that person, they, it'll sell out, you know? For sure. Versus in Canada, they said, at the time, um, Canada just got their first outdoor TV

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  network, which was called Wild TV and they had hunting shows, but most of their shows were shows that we had watched here five, 10 years ago. And it was just all the shows domestically were sending all their repeats up there and just like, you know, just kind of rebranding. But then also like selling that airtime to their sponsors here like, yeah, we're also airing, you know, 10 times a week in Canada for this or that. So when I was up there, the shop said, well, I mean, we would love to get like super technical seminars, but what brings people in the door is when the hunting shows come. Like if, if you're on a hunting show, there, if you're on Wild TV, we'll freaking pack

• 1:23:24Speaker 01

  the store. So I remember going back to my boss at the time, who actually works for us now. And I told him, I said, well, they really said to get the foot in the door, like we need to be, I need to be a show. And I had already done DVDs that were like, you know, kind of.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Out of the trunk of your car DVDs that I thought were a little bit of ahead of their time because I always said that like I wanted our hunting show to be like hunting kind of crashed with MTV Cribs crashed with like Robin Big and so like our first DVDs that's what they were and so they were to like way faster paced music and like way different editing than kind of like the banjo music.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Do you put those on YouTube?

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  I haven't. I need to get you one of those DVDs.

• 1:24:17Jocko Willink?

  How come you don't put them on YouTube? On your YouTube channel? People are gonna be amped to watch it now.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Maybe they, I mean, looking bad, it'd be like you watching yourself on video 10 years ago. You'd be like, man, was I horrible?

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, you at least gotta have some fun with it and put them on there.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, like that haircut you posted.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Prince Valgut coming at you.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  That was freaking awesome.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Bro, it was 1977. That was what was happening and I didn't, I don't think I even had, I don't think, I don't even think I thought, you know what I'm saying? I didn't think I thought about like a haircut. I think it was just, you know, my mom would come in with a pair of scissors, you know, done. Like I wasn't like, do I need?

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Hold still for a minute.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Do I need to get a haircut? Do I not need to? She's just like, that's, it was like, that's what's happening, right? You don't have any choice in the matter and didn't care about it one way or the other. I still barely care.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  I feel like when we post this podcast, we need to put a thing in there that says like, unless you're a dork about archery, fast forward to like the hair moment because me talking about my past to me seems like, I don't know, I'd way rather, what I remember about you the most is like how hard we laugh at stuff and you know, it's such a different side than, you know, kind of like at the beginning of the thing when you're reading, you're so serious and awesome at that. Like you're the, you're the perfect person to like do voiceover work. But I also know like at any given second, if it was just the two

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  of us, you could drop a one liner in there. That would freaking bust people up in here.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I definitely, I mean, that's, bro, yeah, you're right. Any of this stuff, it's like, you having fun while you're doing it. If it's not fun to do, then why are you doing it?

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:10Jocko Willink?

  I will say though, like, I like to have fun, you like to have fun, but man, it's legit. When you go into like kill mode on a hunt, it's freaking, I'm like, oh yeah, here it is. You, cause you go into just like boom. Like I could, I just see him like, okay, I gotta hang on cause he's freaking, he's going. And it's, it's legit, man.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Well, I think that same thing that's just inside, it's dormant and I'm pretty, I'm pretty like low key and docile most of the time.

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  I feel like that's how I am naturally, but then like certain things like that, when that moment triggers and it's like a game face, that's kind of what happened when I recognized like I wasn't good at archery, you know, I realized like, you know, I just, it's like hyper focused.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  And it gets that way with my training too. If I know I'm not up to par, I get very hyper focused on, on just getting better and, and training and I can kind of just go over the deep end. You know, I can either be all in or, or totally out, which is kind of like from a target archery point of view, people ask me why I don't compete. I don't have, like, I don't have a drive to compete. That's not to say if for some reason I, you know, did it accidentally and I wouldn't get fired up again.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  I've seen you do that where we're walking down the tack and all of a sudden someone's like, hey, dud, I bet I can do this. I bet I can hit that. You're like, same thing. I'll see your face and I'm like, oh, he's about to just twelvering this thing, you know, cause you get in that competitive mode that happens. You know what I, I wanted to come back to? And, and hey, the reason why I think this stuff is interesting, look, I don't think you have to be interested in archery because you, you're, your path in life was not normal, right? And people, look, you could have been talking about someone that was into spearfishing or someone that was into jujitsu or someone that was into anything. To to go down the path like you did and forge your own way ahead and make a life for yourself

• 1:28:17Jocko Willink?

  based on doing something that you loved. People could apply that in any category. Whether you're into knitting or whether you're into freaking bowling, it doesn't matter. So there's some real application. I guess I should have said that at the beginning. Hey, if you're thinking about the way your life looks, especially if you're 20 years old or 25 years old and you're kind of like, well, I'm doing this, but I don't like it. I mean, here you are, like going to college, but I don't really want to do that, you know? Hey, and and you've done that multiple times. 3D archery, I'm totally into it. Oh, guess what? I'm not really into it that that much into it anymore. Okay, I'm gonna do something else. Go to Target archery. Okay, I'm really into that for a while. I guess what? It's interfering with my hunting. Not gonna do that anymore. Now I'm gonna focus on hunting. I'm gonna focus on building this brand. I'm gonna focus on creating new products. So all that stuff, it may seem mundane to you

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  looking back at it, but for a normal person that can take this and apply it to, you know, uh, uh, building something, creating something, it's like you've done well, not just from an archery perspective, but a business perspective in in at the same time. So it's real lessons. One of the lessons I wanted to come back to, because we kind of drifted over it. But when you were talking about as somewhere along the the way, you realize that you could like freaking rage doesn't help, right? Rage doesn't help. And you said you had a coach that was like, hey, listen, the arrows that you shot, and this is such an important, this again, this is a life lesson. And there's all kinds of things that tie into life and archery.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  But the life lesson is like, hey, you shot that arrow and you freaking shanked it, right? You can blow your next eight arrows, like you can just send them all out the freaking, you know, into a tree somewhere, or you can just be like, okay, that didn't, doesn't matter. Can't change it. Move forward. What was that lesson like? Who taught it to you?

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Um, an Olympic arch, an Olympic archery coach who I'm pretty sure was also a Marine. I mean, like, you know, straight up Marine haircut all the time. But he coached a couple, a couple like super high level ath- uh, archers. But he was also like, he didn't coach very many people and he was also, you know, very. I don't know, he was, he was very like stone, you know, so you knew if he was there, he was there watching his few athletes. And they like would pay for him to come and stuff like that. But I remember one time I was in a leading group, we got peer grouped and

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  then the second day you're, you know, like ranks one, two, three, and four together on the target, you know, and they shoot through and then it kind of came down to the last target. And, you know, I needed a 12 or something to make it into the shoot off, you know, into the top six. And, and I missed, you know, and I was freaking pissed about it, you know, like broke my stabilizer over my knee and freaking hammer tossed my bow through the woods type thing. And, you know, ended up coming back like with my bow, just kind of seeing the damage I did. And, and he came over to me, his name was Tim Strickland,

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  and he said, you know, you could be an amazing archer, but he said, until you start not letting the arrow that you shoot affect the ones that are still in your quiver, you never will. And he said, he goes, do you know a way to get an arrow back once it's left your bow? And I said, what do you mean? And he goes, do you know a way to get it back other than to physically go down there and pull it out of the target like you just did? And I said, no, sir. And he said, well, once it's gone, it's gone. And he said, so if you make one mistake, don't make the same mistake for every arrow that's left in your

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  quiver, you know, make one, pull it, you know, pull that arrow out, throw it away, whatever you want. But there's other arrows in the quiver that are capable of doing what you want them to do. And so there's been tournaments where I've, you know, I've actually talked, you know, where I will freaking make a bad shot and then just look down at my quiver and be like, do any of you sons of bitches want to go in the ten ring because that guy didn't? And, you know, and it was just like a totally different approach and mentally it's, you know, I've, I've totally, it honestly helped me. This was a, it's kind of a weird thing

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  to say, but, um, you know, he told me, said, you won't figure out how to win until you learn how to lose. And that was, you know, I was like, the rage of losing was overpowering my ability to perform at my best because I was letting, you know, I was letting those things happen. And then I remember kind of wanting to get into that a little more. And I read some kind of a sports psychology book, you know, I don't know what it was called, but it said something in there that this sports psychologist had talked to, like, he worked with a lot of high level pitchers. And he told them that part of their success

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  was that they had to be able to accept that there was going to be an umpire that would, they needed to expect two to three bad calls by the umpire every game. And when they got a call that they didn't think was right, they could just check it off the list of, okay, well, there was one of them. And so I started doing that too, and started saying, okay, when I go to an international event, because there certainly are judges that call them really, really tight, you know, and they're all looking at them with a magnifying glass, but there's some, like, when you'll say, like, judge, and then, you know,

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Some dude comes over that is notorious, like if the, you know, when they do their random thing of like judge so and so, go pull it. And then you see him, you're like, it's out.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Cause some of them, you just think like, they think like, if, if they can't figure it out themselves, I'm just going to go over there and look around at it, but I'm calling it out, you know? And then there'd be some like, oh yeah, I got a chance with this gal. Like, you know, hey, Suzie, how you doing today?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  But yeah, learning that, you know, learning, learning how to lose, cause I've lost way more than I've won. And that, you know, and that, that's a, that's a fact of, you know, I, you have to figure out a way to win in life. You know, you do have to figure out a way to win, but if you deal with like being a hyper competitive, then you also have to learn how to lose. Otherwise you freaking derail yourself way more than others can derail you. And I'm convinced that I beat myself way more than other people beat me in, in most of the things that I've lost at. You know, it's like, which is why now my coaching's evolved so much because now my coaching is so focused on,

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  you know, what you execute within your box. Because I kind of got to the point where I recognized, if I make a good shot, it's a 10. That's the highest score on the paper. So if I do that all day, no one's going to beat me. We're tied at the end. And if I just keep doing that until tomorrow, then guess what? Worst case scenario, me and that other guy are still tied. But if I shoot nines, then yeah, the other guy is already in an advantage. So, you know, if I focus on just execution, and so once I kind of came to that realization of,

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  no one can beat me if I'm executing. If I make a good shot right here, I don't need to see where it lands. Because if my sight tape's right and I trust the equipment that I've got, I know it's in the middle. Like I know that, but I have to execute here. And so it really got to the point where I like,

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  I took away my spotting scope to where I wasn't getting in the habit of shooting an arrow, looking for the result, shooting an arrow, looking for the result, which is something that even today, when I work with parents, I tell them that there's, there's like parents that at an archery tournament, they sit like front row with a spotting scope. So the kid will shoot and then they'll be like, 10 and 11 o'clock and then, you know, and the kid will shoot and just turn around to like dad to get confirmation of like how that was. And so part of the things when you have that type of parent is telling them like, listen, this kid, like they need to execute them looking for you at you

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  for, you know, the result all the time. It, it, you, athletes start to lean on their coach so much. And that was actually one of the problems with some of the people that had that coach that I talked about. They only did really well when he could be there with them because, you know, he'd be like, all right, hey, you missed that one. F those guys, you know, you're good. You're the freak, you know, and they had to have that, that, that continual like affirmation. Whereas honestly, from my life, I feel like most of it, I was alone, you know, in regards to like, I like training alone, you know,

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  honestly, I like archery too, because it's a singular sport. So if I train and if I prep, then I'm ready and it's in my hands. Same with hunting, you know, same way with hunting. If I, you know, I've had hunts where I've had a lot of distractions and I threw my stuff in a case that, you know, the day before and went and, you know, missed a couple of shots and was just like enraged. But then I also thought like, yeah, dude, you didn't prep. You did no homework. You know, that's what happens. So I feel like because I've had to train that way and even, even when I lift, you know, I love lifting by myself versus like going to somewhere where

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  people distract me. I just feel like, you know, I've, I know that if I put in the work, then at that point, it's, it's really on me, not on someone else. And like when I told you, we sucked at football, you know, there was a couple people like, you know, like Jason, who knew their role and knew their position and other people's position and they would cover for people that maybe didn't do something right. But there's also three quarters of the team that didn't. So in high school, what's hard is I don't feel like anyone really prepped as hard as me in that because I honestly like put no effort anywhere else, you know,

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  whereas they probably had lives and maybe, you know, actually got good grades and stuff.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  But I think that's why archery has been so awesome to me is because, you know, the harder I've pushed, the harder I've pushed at it and the more I've put into it, like it's not like weightlifting where you plateau. I haven't found a plateau yet. Like I can make a target further and I can suck again. Or, you know, you know, there's just, or I can try a different species or a different, you know, climate or a different time of year and it's a whole new challenge. Like it's a clean slate and then you're, you know, trying to formulate a plan and map out a plan of how do I, you know, how do I, like, win this challenge?

• 1:40:07Jocko Willink?

  I was at a, you and I were at TAC, the first time we did TAC and like I was. Like feeling pretty good and I'm like, you know, you're like, bro, you're freaking, this is awesome. You're doing great and we're getting through the course a little bit. And then, man, then I just, I, I like hit a branch, right? And it was a little situation where you said step back and you meant back behind me. But I thought you meant back away from the target. And so I like, didn't, it didn't make sense to me what you said, so I didn't listen to you, which is a mistake. So I just cracked off this around and this thing just freaking just

• 1:40:47Jocko Willink?

  bang into a tree.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  And, and everyone on that map.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Everyone like.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  It sounded like you hit someone's like door with a Mac, like with a microphone on the backside of it.

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Just. And this is what I saw was earlier, you know, you were saying like, hey, you know, when somebody grabs me by the face mask and it's like, oh, you need to get this shit together right now. Like, that's what you want. And then, but like I've, I've done that, like when I was in the, when I was in seal teams and I was teaching, like I would be, you know, I'd have some guy that I'd be like, hey, man, if I freak out on this guy, he's going to freak out. And he's just going to collapse and break down mentally. And I got someone else where it was like, if I don't get their attention, you know, some guy might pull aside and say, hey, listen, man, think about what's going on. Another guy may be like, hey, you need to think about what's going on and you got to figure out what methodology you're going to use.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:35Jocko Willink?

  So what's, what's interesting for me is when you're coaching me, like I know what you're doing. I know that I go, oh, he, he's trying to get me to chill out because like, like on that one, you were like, you're like, hey, man, hit, you hit that limb up there, you know, it's just trying to say, but you know, you, you said, you know, knock another one, knock, take a step back, knock another one. I was like, cool. And I was like, he's just trying to get me to chill out so I don't freak out because I just freaking T-boned a tree. And, and like, I know what you're doing, but as Echo Charles says sometimes to me, he knows what I'm doing when I'm talking to him about stuff. He's like, I know what you're doing. Guess what? Still works.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  It still works to be like, hey, here's what's going on, man. Just, just back off a little bit or dude, you're freaking out. You're not, you know how to do this, like those kinds of coach and also being like, hey, get over here. Like, hey, you need to move down, like those kinds of things are important. So for you as a. Coach, the way you read and I've watched now I've watched you coach a bunch, but like at TAC you'll sit there. Like we'll sit there at a place at one of the targets and you'll just like watch. Four or five groups shoot. And so I just sit there and watch you coach them, you know, and I'll listen to what you're saying. And you, I can tell that you're going, you're reading people, you know, and going, oh, this person needs confidence or this person. Needs to think through, needs to slow things down, or this person's getting freaking all, all target fixated at the last second and they're cracking the round off.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  So you're reading them and then you're applying the right coaching technique to what's going on in their head. And that's freaking, that's just like, that's why, honestly, to me, your whole life. The number one thing for me, when I look at you is like, coach, like that's the, the highest thing that I look at you. I was like, man, that guy's a. Look, he's a good archer. He's a good hunter. He's a badass athlete, but man, he's a freaking dialed in coach.

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  It's what I'm passionate about, like especially. You know, with honestly, Rogan introducing me to Andy, like I think was. Really the thing that started everything down the path of now, how many military guys that I've been able to get into and gals get into archery.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, I love that because. There's so many things that are there and especially with. Team guys, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's, you know, army or, you know, it, it, it really doesn't matter. But if, if, if they've been some type of a team or like special forces. They just, you know, they're good students and they're hypercritical of themselves. Now granted, some of them are like, I got this. And yeah, once they realize, no, I just made an ass of myself, they'll, they'll listen. But even if they don't listen right there, by the next time they talk to you, they've a hundred percent.

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  You know, went crazy about trying to apply that, you know, ever the, the work ethic is very. It's like the perfect formula for a coach, you know, is, is all those guys and. Ever, every one of them that I've introduced it to so far has needed. Has really needed archery.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  As, I don't know, like, like you said, it's like a quiet, it's like a quiet form of what you used to do, you know?

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, what it is really, to me, it's a new mission. Like you, you spend your whole life with a mission, with like something that you know that you're focused on. And then one day you wake up, like you retire or you get out, the mission's gone. Like you can't have it anymore. And look, you can try and hang on onto it and you can try and freaking relive those things in your head, but that's not gonna be, that's not gonna work out.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's not there anymore. And that's a, that's a shitty reality to face. Like when I had to clean, when my, when I retired and then I went and cleaned out my cage. And I spent most of my career within like a 300 yard radius, like SEAL Team One, SEAL Team Three, SEAL Team Seven. I was at SEAL Team Two in Virginia Beach for, for a little while, but most of it, you could throw a football to everywhere I was. So when I was 19 years old, I was walking up the steps of SEAL Team One. Fast forward 20, 24 years and I'm 200 yards away, not even, I'm 100 yards away, cleaning out my gear locker for the last time. And it's gone. And all that, my whole life,

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  what everything I cared about, the only thing I ever knew is gone. And look, I look back at it, if I can help out in any way and I go talk to the teams, that's cool, but that's not my mission anymore. And so this happens to guys and, and they get out and they don't have a mission anymore. So all of a sudden you go, hey, man, here's a freaking bow and arrow. It's a primitive tool that you use to hunt shit. And you can get good at it. And, and the, the, the fundamentals are similar, you know, the fundamentals are similar. And like when you taught me for the first time, Andy was sitting there translating. He's like, hey, what he means is front sight focus.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  Hey, what he means is easy, easy, you know, uh, just squeeze the trigger. He was translating me, for me, military stuff. And I was like, oh, got it, got it, got it.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, Andy, I mean, Andy's a good example of him just being like, oh, cool. I got a new mission now. Here's what I can do. And, And look, Andy, of course, Andy has a ton of other things going on in his life and he's got freaking parachuting and jujitsu. Now he's totally obsessed with jujitsu, which is freaking awesome. So, so people find new mission, but this is a good one. It's a good one because there's so many similarities. Gear prep, right? When you're in the SEAL teams, you're freaking obsessed with gear prep. You're figuring out, well, the best way to carry things, the best way to do things. And you're like, okay, I want to be ready for this. I want to be ready for this operation, right? I gotta be in good physical shape. I gotta be able to like clear my mind when shit's going sideways and be like, all right, what's happening right now?

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  So all those things are, are so similar and I, and I know that you spend, I guess, was Andy the first like vet that you worked with?

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Probably that, I mean,

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  probably not, I guess, but yeah, it was the first one where I was, where I was mentally really ready for that. I think I was on a different like pole, like I was at a different stage and it, it honestly, it meant more, you know?

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  I, I was gonna say with Andy, like Andy, what may have been different is that Andy was like, what is that saying about like when, when the, when the student is ready, the master will appear. Like I, I, I don't know if you could have found someone that was more ready.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  To like pick up this stuff and start going, you know? And so that's probably why it left an impression on you. It damn sure left an impression on Andy because this, this dude's totally obsessed, you know? So, a, a, and it's awesome. And you know what's funny about it? Well, Andy's freaking hilarious. You want to like, when you talk about like, oh, Jocko, you make some good one liners, hanging out, like I can listen to Andy just all day long. And, and what's really funny to me is like how he, the way he handles, uh, uh, like mistakes, his, he just hammers himself. He's so freaking hilarious.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  He leaves no room for someone to make fun of him because if, if you don't, if you don't fire off within three seconds.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. He's freaking classic, classic.

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:57Jocko Willink?

  And that's the kind of thing is when, you know, when, when you go out. It gives you a mission. Now you got your friends with you. You know, now you're like, okay, cool. Now we're and we're doing things like what you do in the SEAL Teams. Guess what? If if Andy and I are on a pistol range and we're shooting together, like he's gonna be making fun of me, right? I'm I'm gonna shank some round off or whatever. Need a mag change in the middle when I didn't need or I'm gonna do something stupid.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  And he's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna be fun. And you know what? It's gonna make me better.

• 1:49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna make me better. And that's another thing I noticed at TAC, like the amount of vets that were up there.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking awesome. It's awesome. And guys coming up to me and telling me like, bro, you know, I started this. I started this. This is what I'm doing. And these are guys that freaking, you know, two years ago, whatever, when they got out of the Marine Corps after six years or after eight years or after 18 years, they didn't have a mission anymore. And now all of a sudden, they're freaking jocked up. They got their gear on. They showed me their freaking range finder and they're pumped, man. They're pumped.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:05Jocko Willink?

  And so the fact that you've sort of opened up this uh opportunity for so many guys to start going down the path. It's, man, it's so beneficial to dudes.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's freaking awesome. And it's, there also comes a point in time where you wanna like, I'm fortunate that I can pick and choose what I'm doing right now. And so I really wanna pick and choose things that's rewarding to me and hopefully that's not, you know, selfish, but there's also like, I don't know, there's, there's people that I work with where I know this person could live on this planet a lot longer because they have a new focus right now. And, you know, and archery's changed their life totally. And what's cool about it is, You don't have to be in like perfect physical shape too. So I mean, there's times where people

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  get into archery and they're kind of a little bit lost, you know, maybe, you know, maybe they're not as in shape as they were or whatever, but that's what's cool about it is it's not age specific. And it's, you know, if you can pull it back, you can do it. And I think the natural progression is you pull it back and, you know, maybe you're not good and then you get a little better and then, you know, there's a ton of people now that are just for a better food source alternative that are open minded to hunting if it's can, you know, in their minds, fair chase, which, you know, bow hunting, you know, kind of lowers that boundary for people to where they're like, okay, if I'm going to put in all this work and do it, I'm totally cool.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  You know, eating this thing or killing it or whatever. But then, once you take that step, you realize, oh, this is a whole different kind of hard because now you're dealing with, in my opinion, some of the animals are just so much smarter than other things you could roll up on at Merck, right? I mean, they're, they're freaking keyed up, you know? Cause I remember, uh,

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Andy and I were on something where it was, it was, it was a pretty tough, like, you know, it was kind of a little bit of a miracle that we pulled off this stock and jacked something. I don't know what it was, but um, I, I remember saying like, you know, doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to kill a person. And he's just like, dude, he goes, it is not this hard at all.

• 1:52:41Speaker 01

  He's like, he goes, all of us would be, he's like, you know, he's like, a lot of us would be, you know, at a totally different level if we had to learn this way first. He's like, it, he goes, if, if everyone had this background prior to going into the teams, he's like, It would be, it would be insane.

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  No, it'd be very beneficial, very beneficial. There's so many things that you gotta think about that are the exact same. The other, well, with elk, the only thing that's not the same with elk is smell. Like, like, although if you talk to some of the Vietnam guys, they're like, oh, the VC or the, the NVA would smell you.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  And so if you-

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  And they could smell them.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  And they could smell them too.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:53:23Jocko Willink?

  So maybe we need to just account for everything.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Well, now with dogs, like what I told Andy was I said, listen, you know, if, if I knew there was someone coming to jack me, you know, I would definitely have at least a dog, you know, I would definitely have dogs around because obviously dogs could smell too. You know, if you trained them on something, you know, specific time, type of gear or something like that, it would be an advantage. But I've actually talked to, um, well, one of the guys that we're with tonight.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  He's actually hooking me up with some of the guys that are going to do some of the training down in Lanai.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  For the sniper training.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Um, they're doing a couple of team things there. And so he had asked me if I wanted to go down just to, to teach some navigation of like, instead of learning the long distance aspect to like make some competitions on the closest shot to where they, you know, to where I would assess their choice of that navigation and like what they could do different. To where it's like, okay, we know how you, how far you can shoot something from now. You know, who can jack something at a yard or whatever, you know?

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, um, it's totally different to have to get within, you know, 50 yards or something. That's just freaking crazy.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:44Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's crazy to think that way. Whereas with a rifle, you know, you can be, I mean, at least 500 yards. You can be 500 yards and be like, you know, we're good, I got this. Yeah, I, I was, so we went surfing yesterday. At least, yeah, we went surfing yesterday and uh Why'd you pause? Was that that bad? Was that that bad? Well, actually, no, I paused for a second to think to myself, did he surf or not? And the fact of the matter is, you did surf. You did surf, you paddled on the waves, you caught the waves and you stood up. That's why I paused, I was like, wait, did he surf? Yes, you did. You caught multiple waves, you paddled into them yourself. And then you stood up and rode the waves. That's what surfing is. So you did, we did surf yesterday.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  And I know you'd only been one other time, which was, the last time you went was, was a little bit more of a At the pier. Yeah, it's at the pier and it's a, it's a much more forgivable, sort of like easier step. Like, we, where we went yesterday, that's, like, you can't push yourself into those waves. You can't touch the bottom and be like, oh, I got this. You have to actually surf. Where we surfed yesterday, you actually have to surf. But when we were, when we were going out, we were with Josh and I was sort of like, you know, I'm just gonna let Josh, cause like, I don't wanna, I didn't wanna be telling you things and Josh telling you things and you're sitting there freaking got two people telling you shit to do and it just too much, right? Yeah. So I was just kinda do, I was just kinda going.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  And, but man, as I was going down, there was like, before we even got in the water, there was 97 things I wanted to tell you. Like, hey, man, you gotta watch out for this, this thing over here, this path over here, you gotta watch, here's the lineup, here's where the, here's where the, uh, the channels are. Like, this is where you wanna sit, here's what you wanna watch, I, like, I had 97, before we even got in the water, just before we got in the water. And I'm not, you know, if you're at a, at a freaking black belt level in archery, like, I'm not that, I'm not at that highest level of surfing. And I was like, man, imagine how many things were going through your head as you're watching me like a freaking monkey with a damn bow, just thinking, alright. With a 50 foot surfboard.

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was just like, the amount of things that, that, that you don't know about surfing, the amount of things that I don't know about archery and about hunting and about scent and about terrain and about the way the freaking animals react to this and different animals react a different way. And there's like, so much to learn. It's freaking crazy. Yeah. It's crazy.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  It's hard as a coach because a lot of times you forget more than you like you don't know what you should be talking about until you realize like, oh.

• 1:57:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  And you gave me like, there were several of those yesterday.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  The worst one was what you told me when we were on the deck, like watching, we were like watching, you're like, yeah, I meant to tell you when you were like, you see how all the waves are coming in right there, like off that set. Like, that's why Josh and I, when we were done, we would go around those to like loop back and he's like, you know, you just kept going straight back up the gut.

• 1:57:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:57Speaker 01

  And he's like, I was just waiting for that board to like freaking T-Rex your face. And meanwhile, I'm like, bro, that would have been something like when we were standing up on the top, looking down, if you would have said like, hey, you see how all those waves break like this. So when you get your set and you ride that out, you know, looping behind that. So you're not like freaking, how is full blown like doing Bud's training?

• 1:58:24Jocko Willink?

  Taking him on the freaking head for freaking like eight minutes. What happened to Dudley? Oh, he's in, he's in the impact zone, just getting hammered. But, but you did get up like while we were surfing, you know, you did surf. And to me, that's a testament to, you know, like being athletic and be, being able to actually, you're really your first day out to go paddle into waves and stand up. That's not easy to do. Now, Josh Hall did make you a freaking, basically an aircraft carrier for a surfboard. It's freaking massive.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Eleven six and it's like over four inches thick and 24 inches, which anyone that's a surfer is hearing these numbers going, damn, that is an actual aircraft carrier. But that's what a perfect platform. And plus you're, how much do you weigh?

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  Two forty.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Like, that's a different level. You need a big ass board. And it looks like, Echo Charles.

• 1:59:23Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:59:24Jocko Willink?

  What's up with your surfing career?

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  Uh, minimal at best.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  How come?

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  I don't know. There's no tangible reason. I mean, I guess if I search my soul, you know, I did body boarding, sponging, as it were.

• 1:59:39Jocko Willink?

  Sponging.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  You know, for the most of my adolescent life. And then, yeah.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  How did you not, how did you not like say, oh, wouldn't it be cool to stand up on this thing and ride this wave and glide through the ocean?

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. It's just one of those things. You know how like where I grew up on the south side of Kauai, they're actually not there surfing, but they, I grew up at the beach, like literally grew up at the beach. And then.

• 2:00:08Jocko Willink?

  Again, you're saying this like this is some sort of a weird way that you wouldn't be surfing. But you're like, no, no, no, I grew up at the beach. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  Right, but if you.

• 2:00:18Jocko Willink?

  What's wrong with you?

• 2:00:18Speaker 02

  If you understand the progression, just naturally kind of growing up, there you go, you're swimming, you know, in the baby pond at Playboy Beach. And then you're like, okay, then you're kind of body surfing a little bit, then you're boogie boarding, body boarding, sponging, you know, all sorts of things. And then, yes, exactly. And then you start to go surf and, and there's a, there's a, how should I say, geographical element to it as well. You're literally in the baby pond, then you're outside the baby pond. And then the surfing waves and the surfing spots, those are out. So you always see the surfers, but they're way out. So I get, maybe I think when we started getting into football and stuff, it's like the beach started to be less and less. And then we just never, I don't know, I never did.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Are you thinking maybe now is the time?

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  For a second. So like, you're gonna have to get out, like you said, where you want to be is a little bit further out. You know, that's where the good stuff is. It's best to crush an arm workout like forty five minutes before your first day.

• 2:01:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, that was interesting too. So like we get in the water.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Well, I have been surfing before though.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. No, but I'm, I was like, I'm talking to Dud and I'm like, bro, I've been on hunts with him. Like I'm watching him move through the forest and he's just like. You know, freaking fourteen foot legs and he's just stepping over like he's stepping over small like yeah, like small trees and stuff like this. And I'm, I'm like, dude, you know, and then watching him shoot up, watching him shoot a ton. And then like hawk a football or whatever. I'm like, yeah, this guy's a great athlete. And so I'm thinking, we're going surfing and I'm like, okay, you know, he, and I said, man, you're gonna, I was, I told you this. I go, bro, with your long arms, you're gonna just be like, and this big board, you're gonna be, you're gonna be like a freaking, you know, a cigarette boat.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Just going through the water. So we go in and I, like I said, I wasn't doing any coaching. I was just kind of leaving that to Josh and I get in the water. And I start paddling out and then I look back because Dud was going next and then Josh was doing sort of like cleanup, right? In case something went sideways while we were getting in. So then I see Dud like, okay, he's good. He's in. And then I start paddling and I'm not like racing, but I'm just paddling out. And then Josh comes up next to me. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. I wonder where Dud is. So I'm paddle a little bit more and I look back. So now it's been like probably one minute and thirty seconds, maybe. I look back and as soon as I look back, I see Dud and he looks like he's just like freaking gotten to a wrestling match with a bear.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  Like, I'm like, oh yeah, cuz here's the thing. And you brought this up to me a long time ago, Echo Charles. If you're not used to it, that's like it, if you're not used to it, it doesn't matter. Look, it matters. And if you weren't in good shape at all, then it would have really sucked. But if you're not used to that little particular muscle group and the technique, cuz you're in the water and there's balance going on and yeah, it's a little bit.

• 2:03:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, I mean, I was laughing at myself because, uh, well, first off, I didn't know like where we were going cuz we were, we were surf, gonna be surfing sets, right? That were further out, you know, I don't know where it was, probably won't say cuz I know you have your spots, but. So my first experience was we walked out from the pier and like where stuff was breaking right there, that's where I was surfing. So when he, he kind of jumped off the. Rock and went out their ways and I was talking to Josh and Josh was like, yeah, just get where you're comfortable and launch out on your board, you know, wait, you know, wait for a smooth spot

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  and jump out. So when I did that, by that point, Jaco was like 100 yards out. So I thought like, he's where we, where we're going to be waiting for these waves. So I just went like full sprint for like the first 30 seconds. And then Josh, like as I'm like, kind of starting to burn out, you know, that freaking Josh is like strokes by and they're just going and then Jaco's just looking back. He's like, gotta go about 200 more yards. And I was just thinking like, and dude,

• 2:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I was going into like, I was, I was saying this kind of stuff like, bro, you gotta give me like two minutes of hard paddle. I was in that mode. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  Two minutes and it's over.

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  Cause he was kind of in the lineup, like not, sorry, he was in the impact zone. And all of a sudden there's a lull and I'm like, because now I'm real, now I put everything together in my mind. And I'm thinking if this, if this brother doesn't get out there like now, he's going to be in here for a long time. So I'm like, you gotta give me like two minutes, give me like two minutes of push of work.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  It was, but see, I love, like, I love that. I love something that, you know, it's just, to me, struggle gives you, like, gives you a purpose. You know, today, when we were waiting to come here, I just sat out there and watched those things. And I was like, thinking about every mistake I made yesterday and how I would do it differently today. Paddling was one of them. But like even yesterday, Jaco's like, hey dude, you know, just hit the garage for your workout. So I went down in there and it's very different than mine, you know? So I'm kind of looking around, looking at the, you know, the tools, trying to figure out like what I can construct, you know, that day. So.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  I freaking, you know, hit his rings for a while and stuff and, and did some kettlebells. But then I also thought like, you know, a lot of it's like freaking gorilla movements. So, you know, his wife and girls had some bands over on the side. So after I, you know, slung some kettlebells around for a while, I, you know, went and grabbed some bands and just did some like burnouts of, you know, shoulders and, and, you know, freaking arms and stuff. Which I thought was, you know, I worked out for an hour. I was pretty happy with, you know, everything. But like, dude, at like a hundred yards out, freaking trying to paddle that aircraft carrier.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  And he's like, 200 yards, bro, and you got it. And I was just like, my freaking triceps.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  You know what he said to you later when we got back? He's like, he's like, yeah, you know, bro, I mean, I just realized for the first time that like, when you see a surfer, that guy's in like better shape than a wrestler. Like he's in sick. You gotta be in the sickest shape. Cause that's how hard it was.

• 2:06:54Speaker 02

  In a way, yeah.

• 2:06:55Jocko Willink?

  In a way, but also not in a way. Let's face it. You can be like a fat old dude that surfs. Like I'll take you to, yeah, they're just used to it and they got good technique and they just go out there and they don't even, you know, they don't even freaking try and they're out there killing it.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  It's like when I give a bodybuilder, you know, a bow and watch him like struggle to get it back. And you're like, dude, this is a 70 pound dumbbell row right now and you can't do it, you know, and then, cause yeah.

• 2:07:20Jocko Willink?

  What is that? Is that that they don't have like the, the little stabilizer muscles or something?

• 2:07:24Speaker 01

  It's no, it's just like, it's just the understanding of like the technique of like where you're pushing and pulling and like the leverage of it. It'd be like, you know, it'd be just like walking up and even if a big dude, you said like, you know, hey, do a clean and jerk. And you just like put 200 pounds on there. You, I mean, it's just gonna be a train wreck.

• 2:07:43Jocko Willink?

  They don't have the technique. Whereas you get a little female that knows how to do a clean and jerk. She'll take that 200 and throw it up like it's nothing.

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  Well, we talked about that on the mace today. We were talking about that.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  What the swinging one?

• 2:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the big mace.

• 2:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. That, uh, for surfing, yeah, you're right. Like actually you don't have to be in that good a shape. You just have to be used to, cause it's so repetitive. Like just paddling, it's so repetitive.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  It's like not knowing how to swim. Honestly, like on that board.

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  I just felt like, you know, the first time, even if someone knows how to swim, you throw them in the water. If they don't know like stroke and like how to block and breathe and you're like taking on water in your mouth and you're like trying to blow that out and you know, you're freaking sprinting when there's waves up like, and it was like simple stuff, you know, I got my first ride in, I think I was on my like, I went up to one knee and then got up to one foot for a little bit. And then like as I'm going back out, I'm just, you know, taking freaking,

• 2:08:43Jocko Willink?

  Taking him on the head.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  Taking the straight line straight out and I did that a couple of times. And then I'm out there with Josh. Jaco had rode one in, I'm out there with Josh and a couple, like a big set came that were crashing kind of further out. And like as we're going up, he knew it was gonna like crash and he goes, he goes, bro, when you go up, he goes, do a push up on your board right as you're hitting the, right as you're hitting, you know, whatever he called it, you know, the flake or whatever.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  The white water.

• 2:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, you know, do a push up on your board and then it drives the nose down, then you can just ride the back. And I like, I freaking went up this thing and I'm just like, and rode down and I'm just like, now you tell me, dude. I freaking was taking like full endos, just freaking one after another in the, in the freaking mortar zone. Just taking heavy artillery. Jaco and Josh are just out there like watching me, just like, you know, he'll be back, he'll be back out here at 15 or whatever.

• 2:09:45Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of technique, man.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  And then he told me the, you know, the button hook method.

• 2:09:49Jocko Willink?

  The channels, yeah.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  Like once, we got all the way out and climbed up on the rocks and we were there to take a picture of the three of us, like up at the top of the cliffs. And he goes, see where all those are breaking? He's like, yeah.

• 2:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Don't paddle out there.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  He goes, that's, he goes, that's why like I'd ride it out this way and then I'd come in around the back of that. And then Josh, you know how Josh always rode out that way and then he'd come around the back. He's like, you just kept going right up the middle. I was like, man, you think you'd tell me that like?

• 2:10:23Speaker 01

  10 minutes in. Yeah, any other time.

• 2:10:25Jocko Willink?

  You know what, as you said, there's like only so many things, like the 97 things that I wanted to tell you or that Josh wanted to tell you.

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:35Jocko Willink?

  That just didn't make the chart yet. And then once you, once we realized, okay, he's going to be able to survive, then that made it on to the freaking, on to prioritize and execute thing. Don't just sit there in the impact zone and try and paddle out.

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, so going back to the business side of things, because again, to me, that's one of the, that's what makes this applicable. Well, that's what makes your story applicable in so many different realms is the, the business side and the way you've set things up. You end, you ended up eventually, kind of like, I don't know if this was your, your, your final move. No, it's not your final move, but your, one of your biggest moves was partnering up with, with PSE.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that definitely came later, but yeah, I mean, there, there came a point where our business had grown a really awesome community that was, you know, thriving for the educational content. And then also like products that supported that educational content, um, which was all, you know, sharing side of the house. I was more, you know, I come up with things to talk about based on someone I'm working with at that time. But yeah, the brand became a community, you know, it became, you know, Sharon always said like, we're not, you know, we don't have fans. We have, you know, we have a community, like we have, you know, we have a knock on nation.

• 2:12:00Speaker 01

  Now that's kind of what we referred to it probably five years ago, you know, five or six years ago, which, uh, we just turned 10 years old. So, you know, halfway through, we realized, you know, like what really fit our model. And then, yeah, one of the hard things for me, one of the hardest things is, you know, I'm a very loyal person, you know, and I've, since I've also been, I've worked internally at manufacturers, I look at, you know, ambassadors or external representatives in a different light than, you know, if someone's just out being an ambassador, you know, or

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  public figure, whatever, whatever, you know, it's way different now. But when I was internal and we had pro staff, you know, you just, you see what people do that really helps the company and makes you like never in question of should we get, you know, who are we going to keep around this year? I just knew those types of things, you know, to where if it was, just like with, for me, like with my friendships, if it's a two-way street, then, you know, that's a good relationship. But if it's all, if it's always like, you know, there's always a give and a take, then, you know, that's just not like a healthy relationship.

• 2:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Like, like you built me a bow, you taught me how to shoot, you took me on haunts, and then I broke your neck. That's, that's a good relationship.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm looking for. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that, like, when you were here doing the podcast with Andy and Trevor, that was day one of jujitsu for me. And I was actually in this room, I just couldn't talk because my neck was broken. I was over in that corner just trying to get oxygen, fricking pull my esophagus off the back neck bone I had. Meanwhile, you and Andy are just fricking laughing.

• 2:14:05Jocko Willink?

  Cutting it up, man. Check. All right. So, so we form these really good relationships. It's a two-way street, just like you and I got.

• 2:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's always been tough when, when you change, you know, when you, if you change brands, because I don't ever want it to be a reflection of loyalty, but a lot of times. A lot of times, like the higher up you go in what you're giving someone or what they're giving you, there's obviously, there's just more expectation and there's more, you know, I don't know, it's just like the higher up in rank you go, there's, you know, there's things that you need to do better than other people. And so, you know, when you climb to that spot, it's sometimes it's hard when you get to a higher level to then change.

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  Cause I don't ever want it to people to feel like I'm just making a change from a monetary point of view.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  But for me, I had gone through two consecutive contracts that were multi-year contracts. And both of them kind of got cut when our business is trajectory, you know, in this format. But then, you know, they're like, well, you know, we're kind of plateauing from a marketing point of view. And, you know, we're not getting added budgets, but we need to make room for other things. So they were always transparent, but it also became clear of, you know, we're trajectory up. And I want to, I want to provide more free content, but I can't provide free content to the consumer. If I have no support from, you know.

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  By the way, when you say your, your trajectory is going up, you mean?

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  Knock on archery.

• 2:15:51Jocko Willink?

  Knock on archery is growing, you're getting more and more people following. There are more people watching your instructional on YouTube.

• 2:15:58Speaker 01

  There's just a whole new archery pie, like, you know, people, people within the archery community. That pie would be like, you know, local surfers around here, probably, you know, that's probably a pie. Whereas if someone just really started focusing on, you know, teaching surfing to people like me, you know, and I came in, they like start this whole other thing to where these people all over here are probably looking at it like, what's this guy even doing, you know, why, why is he doing that? But the reality is, you know, we're kind of like baking a whole new cake. Because the people that we're getting from the military and, you know, the people that we get from a lot of our mutual friends,

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  like I'm beyond busy just with our, just with people that we know should be getting into archery, right? And.

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  At the end of that contract, my last one, I kinda knew I need to open my ears to everybody because I had been with that company for 10 straight years, but I also had taken six years of, you know, to where things were plateauing and I could see there wasn't progression. So I listened to everybody and yeah, I mean, through everything, there was honestly, there was multiple deals that were better than where I was, but PSE came in and pretty much said like, we love what you're doing and we want you to support what we're doing, but we also want to give you the tools to where if you want to do more, we'll give you the tools for that. So they said, you know,

• 2:17:34Speaker 01

  if you feel like you want to create a bow that's specific to, you know, to your followers, or if you want to do something. And I said, well, you know, can I bring in a bow that's like at a budget price, you know, and they just said, yeah, you tell us what you want it to sell for, you know, we'll assign an engineer to you and you can, you know, you can do what, whatever you want. So it was, it was just, it was just a different door, you know, that got opened that allowed us to go a direction with our brand that I feel good about and I feel like, you know, I sleep well with just knowing that we're giving back a lot. And yeah, PSE has been a huge part of that, you know,

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  they've just given me the tools, you know, the first bow we came out with is the one you and I shoot. And then came out with another bow that was focused on, you know, a price to where the average person can go and get into archery with a really good setup, but probably still less than what you could buy a surfboard for, you know what I mean? And then, yeah, we can choose our direction. So it's been, it's been an awesome partnership and, you know, they're in America, you know, everything's made in America for the stuff that, you know, we're designing and it's just, it's really cool because it's actually the company, my first bow was a PSE

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  and last year was their 50 year like anniversary. So, and PSE started in Illinois, like very close to where that road that I turned down was not very far from there. So there was just a lot of cool things like that, that, you know, a lot of times. If things are meant to be, they happen. You know, I've just learned that, you know, if you force stuff, it's not for the right reasons. So I've, I've just really, I've been fortunate that I haven't had to make a decision based on like, I can't pay my bills if I make this decision. So I've always just let things unfold of, you know, really what's meant to be will be and, you know, and I feel like,

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  I feel like my progression of shooting tournament archery and learning what I learned there and learning the connections and, and growing up, working with the manufacturer and seeing some of that behind the scenes stuff. Like all those were just sacrifices and building blocks that I had to do to get to where I really want to be, you know? I never, I never wanted to be the best tournament archer. I never really wanted to be, you know, I didn't want to just work in an archery, you know, manufacturer or, you know, go to all the, the shoots. I just, I love hunting. I love teaching, you know, I like,

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  I like going to new spots and seeing new things and having new challenges. So, you know, that, that's kind of what it's done for me.

• 2:20:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what I like about it, and I remember as this deal was unfolding, you were telling me what it was like and it's like, it's a true partnership. Like you said, you're allowed to go in there. You can help design exactly what it is you want. It's your name going on these, on this equipment. So it's like, you can't be anymore invested in this company, which is, which is awesome.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the other thing too is everyone needs to remember, you know, if you can't shoot it well, there's no purpose to it. So like through that whole process, I got equipment from all these companies that I really hadn't done a.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  Hadn't done a lot of due diligence shooting to where I, you know, because I'd only shot two other archery brands really at from a like professional level, each one for about a decade. So I shot other competitors to know what they felt like, but that doesn't mean I knew what they would do like in my hands every day. So I needed to know that. And right away after three or four days, I thought this is a seriously underrated product, you know, and I went out there and met with them and they talked about a lot of things that they wanted to do, especially like at that 50 year, you know, they wanted to, you know, make some changes from the sales

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  point of view. They wanted to make some marketing decisions that were different. You know, they said, you know, we want to be able to to hit some like niche markets, which for them, our community was a niche market, which I think was very underrated. You know, now, now I think they realize, you know, what the impact is. But yeah, it really gave the ability for me to take people that had incredible ideas internally and and awesome patents, which, you know, for me would be hard to go out on my own and do it because I'd have to work around so many things that now that I've shot their bows, I personally like. So, you know,

• 2:22:38Speaker 01

  I would be trying to figure out a way around what they've solidified as a, you know, as a proven design. So it just, it was a, for me, it was a plug and play like, and that's what it had to be. Because, you know, we've worked really hard, Sharon and I, to, you know, really Stay on our path at Knock on Our Tree because there's, there's been a lot of opportunities to, you know, maybe, I don't know if sell out would be like the term because it probably wouldn't be that drastic, but we could have definitely made a lot more decisions that would have put

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  our following secondary to decisions that we made. And the PSE collaboration was a, was an awesome plug and play for us. And I think as a, especially me, I feel like I was an athlete that built a career out of the discipline of athletics, honestly. I feel like those are the little things in business, you know, especially now, like so many people build business based off social media, or, you know, maybe they've, you know, maybe they've been with Origin for,

• 2:23:59Speaker 01

  you know, using your Gies for a year and you guys have been good to them and you're, you're laying down foundation to get to where you want Origin to go, but then, you know, Brand Y comes in and says, well, you know, we're not just going to give you a discount on a Gie, we'll give you a Gie. And, you know, I was always at the, the mindset of, okay, if I get a Gie, do I, one, do I really need to get a free Gie if I've got one, even though I had to buy it from Origin, you know? And, okay, let's say I take the free Gie, well, now I've like also started a brand new relationship. So, you know, I think we made a lot of really good choices by

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  weighing out like long-term relationships that understood the direction we needed to go, but we weren't there yet, but they were gonna help at a rate that they could to where we could get to our goal versus like, you know, a lot of startups are the perfect example of like, you know, they wait, they make a lot of dumb decisions as I did as a business, you know, giving stuff away to the wrong people and those, those places come and go all the time. And I think as like an, you know, an ambassador type figure or whatever. You can.

• 2:25:19Jocko Willink?

  I think Andy likes to call them influencers. That's our hashtag influencers.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, which, yeah, that's your official hashtag for Andy now. But yeah, you could, you know, you can burn a lot of bridges and it's just my experience that a lot of these, you know, jujitsu, surfing, archery, the, they're like, they're small demographics. They're like small ecosystems. So it's like, there's only so many times you can burn a hole in the freaking ozone before eventually people are like, that dude's just burning the planet down if, you know.

• 2:25:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What I like about what you guys, what you and Sharon have done, and I think this might be the biggest lesson that I look at you to try and pass on to the people, is you guys have done the right things for the right reasons the whole time. You, you have put the customer first, you put the clients first, you put the people that are watching your videos. I mean, there's, there's, well, that's what you've done. That's what you've stuck to. Making the best products you can, trying to get them at a good price point. I mean, for you to go to PSE and like, say, okay, I could make Wonder Bow, you know, and this super high end bow, but you went there and the first really, I guess the second move you made, because you, you did make that first bow that we're shooting, but then you said, okay, here's the first move. We're going to make a bow that is affordable to

• 2:26:41Jocko Willink?

  people that still kicks ass.

• 2:26:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:26:43Jocko Willink?

  So I think one of, one of the lessons that I take away from this is like, if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, in the long run, strategically, you're going to be better off than, you know, trying to get, trying to maneuver real quick to make a little bit of buck here and a buck there. Like you said, you're burning a hole in the world that you have to live in and it ends up not working out well.

• 2:27:08Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I hate to ask you this because you've probably been asked this 10,000 times, but look, we've been going for two and a half hours or something like that, but if someone is starting, if someone's like, hey dude, this sounds awesome. I want, I want to get into this. I want to get into archery. I want to get a bow. I want to, you know, what, I want to go hunting. I want to be freaking stalking around in the forest with Cami paint on my face. Like, I'm in, I want to get into it. What, what do you recommend? How do you, how do you go about that?

• 2:27:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think first you should just, you know, Google, you know, Google archery shops and look at ratings. There's, you know, some areas are very fortunate to have an awesome archery shop that, you know, has amazing, you know, entry level, you know, classes and programs like that. But also, like, especially from our point of view, knockonarchery.com is, you know, we offer free, you know, lessons and content. I just put out a series, you know, Archery 101 with, uh, you know, Mark Schenker from Kicks Band, because you and I are both were like fricking hair slingers from the eighties.

• 2:28:19Jocko Willink?

  No, you're thinking of Leif Babin. Leif Babin was a hair slinger.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  Was he?

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Not me. I wasn't listening to fricking Poison like you were.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  I'll give that to you, bro. Hold what you got.

• 2:28:35Speaker 01

  You know you did.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  No offense against Kicks, but they weren't in my freaking tape deck.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  What was your top three before we go any further?

• 2:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Led Zeppelin, ACDC, and then just straight into all the hardcore stuff that I grew up on. Cro-Mags, Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, right on down the line. Who wants some?

• 2:29:01Speaker 01

  Well, if you wanted that easier listening, you had alternatives. But, uh, no, I, we did a, we did, I just thought it was a really cool story because, you know, he's, he's later in life, decided to pick up jujitsu, you know, went down that path, you know, wanted to, honestly, wanted to like get away from factory farming. And so decided to go down the archery path and, you know, wanted to like get good enough to where he could, you know, get his own food, so to speak. So it was really cool. And we documented that. And that's, you know, it was like a three-part series, which takes someone from, who had never pulled the bow back and just walks, walked him through like, you know, same thing

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  I did with Helen, right? You know?

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  And same thing you do with me. I didn't know anything about archery. You, again, man, so thankful that you decided like, hey, you will, you are gonna really like this stuff because you heard me on Rogan and you're like, this guy needs to get a freaking bow. So you set it up, you came out here freaking, uh, like, What do they say like, it's not gonna come to you on a silver platter, right? In life, things are gonna come to you on a silver platter. I literally got archery on a silver platter and I know it. To everyone out there that's like, this son of a bitch just had freaking Dudley build my bow and then teach me. Like, that's what happened. I know. I'm sorry that I got that freaking lucky. You know, my buddy, Jack Daniels at Echelon Front, you know, Jack?

• 2:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Bro, he, he's like, man, yeah, he's like, he's like, man, Dudley taught you how to shoot, man. He's like so freaking pumped.

• 2:30:39Jocko Willink?

  So I know that, I know that I got that, but one, but I, I didn't even watch any of your videos. Like before you came out to teach me. And so then immediately I go home and I'm like, all right, what are these videos that he's talking about? And I'm like, oh, that's literally just what he told me to do. Like I went through and I'm like, oh, this is what you, so anybody that's thinking, I got so lucky. I did, I'm not taking that away, but you can get just as lucky by going and pressing freaking play on a YouTube video. And you're gonna get, you said the exact same things to me. You're like, hey, this is what you need to do. Here's where you start. Here's the string. Here's this. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I'm doing it. And then I go home and watch the videos. I'm like, that's what he just told me. He could have just sent me the YouTube link. Didn't have to fly out here to San Diego.

• 2:31:19Jocko Willink?

  So every, the fact that you've given access to your actual program of coaching and it's available to anybody. It's available to anybody. So.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  And on our YouTube channel. You and I parallel each other in that format. Like, and I heard you talk about it in the past. You've talked about, you know, like, you know, for extreme ownership, right? When you first started doing it and you would, you know, probably when you started, you would get cash by going in places and doing that presentation, which is kind of like when I used to travel Europe. And like my slide shows, you know, if people took pictures of them, it kind of weirded me out like, I need to be booking, you know, I need to book another spot. That's how I'm paying for my bills, you know? But then it gets to the point where you realize, no, actually, the more people you're helping,

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  the more people that want to dive deeper. So, you know.

• 2:32:19Speaker 01

  There came a point for me where I kind of knew I was going down the right road when people that were on higher levels were getting mad at me because they're like, don't show them how to do that. You know, why are you showing them how to do that, dude? You know, and because the US was so dominant in archery competition for a long time in the compound bow category. And so like, learning that ranging system on the unknown things. Like, you know, that was never tell anyone, that sort of thing. But just all these small little things, you know, we'd go to another country and see him like punching triggers or something. And, you know, my buddy would look at me like, you freaking talk to them about punching that trigger and

• 2:33:04Speaker 01

  I'm gonna punch you in the face. Let's freaking nuke these people. So, but yeah, I just felt like

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  the more I, the more I gave away, it's also a really good filter because you really start to see how many people are absorbing what you're saying and not, you know, not being an asshole, where they're just asking and they never reply, ask, never reply, never reply. You see people where you look at them and you're like, oh, hey, man, when did you start shooting that silverback? And they're like, yeah, I watched, you know, video, blah, blah, blah. And I've been working on it. And I think I'm getting better. And meanwhile, I know this because I'm seeing, you know, what I tried to teach being applied by someone that I know I didn't directly tell it to. So then naturally, it's like, well, hey, let me give you a little bit, you know, let me help you progress,

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  progress this a little bit. And I feel like for you and I both, you know, we just got to the point where we, where we realized, lay it all out there. And yeah, there's, there's certain places that will say Dudley will give you anything to, to come out here and like do it in person and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, I've got people, you know, we've auctioned a couple bows that have gone, you know, for a lot for good, always for a good cause. But we, we auctioned a bow that went for a lot for the Navy SEAL Foundation to get to that million dollar, march to a million mark.

• 2:34:38Speaker 01

  And, you know, even though it was a raffle, you know, people still, well, you know, not everyone's got 20 bucks to buy a bunch of raffle tickets. And it's like, You know, you can't make everyone happy, but the reality is, you know, if someone really wants to go through and put it all together, they can, you know, they can read all these and, you know, so many different things that I've heard you talk to people, you know, and, and give them, I don't know, you, people will come and be like, hey, you know, Jaco, give me some advice about this. And then, you know, I'll go through and look in here and I'm like, oh yeah, well, you know, I've heard him apply that exact same thing.

• 2:35:21Speaker 01

  And they acted like, you know, he just told them something that's never been said. And it's like, actually, if they, yeah, if they would follow that, like, you know, I'm a broken record when it comes to archery. I've, I've boiled down a recipe to, you know, what I feel is like a balsamic glaze. It's like the good stuff, you know? And I know like what can make most archers who are brand new be at a very high level fast and eliminate a lot of mistakes. But, you know, whether you've watched every video I have or read all those articles or you come in person. Now granted, it's easier for me to see in person a breakdown,

• 2:36:06Speaker 01

  which that is the benefit to being in person. You can directly connect like right away. You're not having to figure out what am I doing wrong and research it. But other than that, like we put it all out there. If I learn something new or if we come out with a new product, then, you know, we're, we're going to put it out there. And most of everything we do is always, it's always a derivative of a need that I see that we can help with. Um, and I remember specifically like on that bow that we were talking about. Uh, I have chalkboards all around me, like you've been to my house and stuff, most anywhere where I.

• 2:36:51Speaker 01

  If I sit down and I'm in there very long, there's chalk, you know, most of my walls are just painted with chalkboard paint because I just write stuff down. So I don't forget it. But I remember like, meeting this person that kind of said like, hey, you know, I'd love to embark on an archery journey. Where do I start? And so I remember like writing that down, which is the name of that bow is embark, because I'm like, you know, embark on your first archery journey, embark on your first bow hunt, you know. So a lot of the things that we put out there are because there was a need, you know, my subject matter comes from someone's problem that I need to help them fix.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've been the subject of that a few times on your social media. Like, hey, start looking at Jaco's shot. He's doing this. And I'm like, there you go. And it's awesome, you know, and, and, and that's the way it should be. You know, what's funny is, well, it's not funny, but probably like the third podcast that we were doing, maybe the fourth, something, but very early on in the podcast, I remember I had been asked a question about leadership. And I was going to give the answer. And I was like, this answer that I'm about to give is like, very, very, very valuable. And it didn't, it wasn't like I had a major debate in my mind, but it was more just an acceptance. It wasn't like I said, maybe I shouldn't give it away. But it was more like I said, when I give this away, this is giving away something very, very valuable.

• 2:38:18Jocko Willink?

  And I, and that's what I'm gonna do. Like, maybe there was a little bit like, well, you know, because I, look, I have a leadership consulting company.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Right? That's what I do is I do leadership consulting. If I'm just, you know, hey, go, go ahead. I'm just gonna give away all the answers for free. Well, maybe that's not a good idea. And I own, if I had that thought, it was like a split second. And I realized it was like, no, actually, every possible thing that I can give to people to help them, that's what we're doing. That's what I'm doing. And, and, and that's what you do. And like you said, what helps is that solves, look, no one in life is going to get to the end of their problems, right? No one's going to get to a point where they just like, oh, I don't have any problems anymore with leadership, right? Oh, I've got everything figured out. No one. And so there's, so you solve a bunch of their problems. Cool. Then guess what? Now, when you work with them, you can do a problem that's actually a little bit more complex.

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:08Jocko Willink?

  It's actually a little bit more challenging, you know, like, I get, kind of like you, you get asked. Hey Doug, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, sometimes I hit a little bit low to the left. And they're thinking that that's the first time you've ever been asked that, you know what I mean? Or they say, hey, you know, I, once I'm sitting on our target, I start my, my, I start to, my hand starts to shake a little bit. Like they're thinking that this is only happening to them. You've been asked that question 15 million times, right? And it happens to me too, like, you know, hey Jaco, I know you talk about cover move, but sometimes the people I'm working with, they don't really, you know, they don't want to do their part. So how does that even work? It's like I've been, they think that that's the only time that's ever happened. And it's actually happened 15 million times that I've been asked that question.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  So give it away, give away as much as you can to people and that elevates everybody. And that means they're, they're seeing value in what you're doing and they're appreciative. And now guess what? They get their problems, that problem solved, cool. If they never have a problem again, that's great. Cool, that's great. Good for them. That's awesome. I'm happy. Someone else is going to have that problem. I'm going to learn by the way. It's just, it's just a, it's doing the right things for the right reasons. Like I said earlier, if you're doing the right things for the right reasons, it's going to pay off in the end.

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  You and I are really similar in a lot of ways, like, you know, right now Sharon and I are staying, you know, in your old house.

• 2:40:29Speaker 01

  So just lurking around and seeing, you know, seeing some of your stuff. I mean, you're,

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  you're not like a gadgety person. You're very, like even your weights are, you know, the first one you got at eBay or where, you know, before eBay, when you walked into fricking Second Wind Fitness or whatever and freaking bought this rusty old freaking thing you got. But you don't.

• 2:40:56Jocko Willink?

  I keep it freaking old school.

• 2:40:58Speaker 01

  You do.

• 2:40:58Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  You do. Everything you do is that way, but.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you knew that the bands you use to work out were not mine. They were my wife's and daughter's.

• 2:41:11Speaker 01

  But I think your consistency with like you get good at the tools you have and you you build yourself around those tools. You don't get tools to try to continue to make you better. You know, you're not like looking for the cheat code, looking for the cheat code. And I know you talk about that.

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Looking for a hack like, oh, this, if I had to get this, it'll make me a little bit, it'll make it a little bit easier. Now, I'm glad we're not talking about surfboards because you also saw my amount of surfboards that I have, which is kind of freaking ridiculous.

• 2:41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Surfboards is, it's like a fricking junkyard of surfboards all over the place.

• 2:41:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And there's a little bit of an excuse for that because different waves require different boards. And there's a lot of different waves to surf.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  I mean, my archery room looks very similar to that, but I don't change unless there's a change needed for the application. Now, one of the things with me is I never really had great continual coaching. A lot of the things that I teach are from mistakes, like no one ever told me why I missed low left. I had to figure that out over a lot of frustration. And so like, once I've learned those things, everything I boil down is to try to help eliminate those mistakes and learning curves. You know, shouldn't say it's cheat codes, but just like me freaking surfing yesterday, I do try to take a direct line of attack.

• 2:42:42Speaker 01

  So my coaching method is very direct line of attack to where you're eliminating mistakes, but like getting to that particular point of topic as efficient as possible to where you're not expending valuable energy in that archery shot.

• 2:43:01Jocko Willink?

  I just want to make sure we capture a couple of things here. So I'm never done archery before and I want to get into archery. What's, we, we, we look for a good archery shop, we read the reviews. What's a good amount of money to spend on that first investment? Is it better to go and like, hey, should you go and try like, hey, can I try a bow? Like, let me shoot some and see what it feels like in the shop? Just to, just to make sure you're like, oh yeah, this is freaking cool. Or is it like, you know, spend a thousand bucks, spend 800 bucks? What's gonna get you in the game?

• 2:43:35Speaker 01

  Well, I think if you go there and you, you try it, most archery shops are gonna let you try it a little bit. I think that would be valuable. And be really specific to them to where you're new. You want to make sure you buy equipment that's very suited for you as a beginner. Um, and one of the examples of that is when you buy a bow, they have like, you know, they all have pulling weight. So when you pull them back, you know, it takes a certain amount of strength to pull them back.

• 2:44:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm real strong.

• 2:44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:05Jocko Willink?

  I want 500 pounds.

• 2:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's Jaco walking in. Uh, but a beginner like our wives, for example, if they went into a lot of shops, some shops, especially if they were excited and just wanted to buy it right then, they would make do with equipment that they have and like, size it down for them versus I would way rather say, hey, I'll wait a couple of weeks to order something to where, you know, it's my pull weight, the bow is the right size for me. Because they can always make it work, but you know, getting the right equipment off the get go and being upfront with them of, hey, I, I really want to do this. I enjoy it.

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  I want the right equipment and it's my personal belief that if you get in on like the lower end stuff, you're gonna, you can progress really fast with archery. So what'll happen is you're gonna do it just a short period of time and realize, I'm actually better than this beginner piece of equipment. And then you realize the value of beginner equipment is kind of a poor investment because it's just, you're gonna sell it for way less because everybody got that cheap entry point. Um, so like with the bow that we did, the embark,

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  that bow allows you to get a bow at a price to where you can put some really high end accessories on it. Because the accessories can carry over. It'd be like, you know, if you went and got, You know, a cool freaking AR, but then like you shot your wad on buying that thing. So then you went, you know, you went and bought a Noveski. And then you're like, well, I got 50 bucks left and you gotta borrow your buddy's like Red Ryder BB gun. Like scope that came on it to like put on your Noveski, that's gonna be a problem. So I tell people, you know, get high end accessories, get, you know, quality arrows, high end accessories.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  Get a bow that's in the middle of the road to where if you move up in that bow, you can transfer your accessories over. Which, you know, we, we've done with you, you know, we can transfer the accessory. I went high end on your accessories because you don't want accessory, like you don't want your sight moving. You know, if your, if your sights moving around or if your arrow rest is moving around, then there's none of us that are gonna know how well you're really shooting. Because there's just continual variables. But I think, I think for a thousand bucks, you can get in to where you can get in and stay in without having to re up and re up and re up.

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  But you want something that has the ability to, especially if you're still growing, you wanna have a cam system. That, and that's kind of the pulley looking things on the bow. You wanna be able to have something that's adjustable. And especially when you're learning, like as a coach, I'm not gonna be hypersensitive of you being exactly your draw length. Which is like your posture when you're at like a full draw position with your bow pulling it back. Because you can pull a bow back to different lengths. There's a good chance that your technique is gonna slightly change over the course of getting better. To where you might need to make some adjustments with that.

• 2:47:30Speaker 01

  So having something that has the ability to adjust is also awesome, which you get when you spend. You know, it's kinda like, I think there's like hundred dollar increments, like you can get a bow for 400 bucks, but you're gonna be limited, you know? And then I think once you get to like 699, 799 for the bow only, you're in a really good position. And then put good accessories on it and you know, you'll be enjoying it for a while.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  That, that level bow. Like the embark, like you, you go out and hunt with that thing. This is

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll shoot one day at the tax will be with an embark and then one day it'll be with an NTN. Like when I, you know, I, and last year, um, I took that bow, you know, on one of my most memorable hunts, you know, because I've always, that's one thing I've always done is I want people to feel like even though for a particular brand, they have a low end model, a mid-grade model and a high-end model. I've always put some of those budget bows to a test and I've used them because I want, I don't want people to feel like they can only shoot archery if they have the best gear. I've proven time and time and time again

• 2:48:45Speaker 01

  that that middle range is a, is a very good place to get in and you can, honestly, you can stay there and be totally okay. But you know, it's no different than, you know, there's a lot of cars that are awesome, but you know, I like my Ram, but I might want that Hellcat Ram.

• 2:49:09Speaker 01

  Even though technically it drives the same.

• 2:49:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Right on. Well, I think that's a, that's good info and I'm sure a bunch of people, it's probably good. Yeah. We're approaching three hours right now, but I just wanted to make sure people are going to get interested in this. I, I want people to, and by the way, you have all this information on, on your YouTube channel about like, well, how to get started, what to look for. Everything from freaking arrows to the, like everything. So

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:37Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's all out there. If you want to go a little bit deeper, um, but yeah, man, I, I, obviously I appreciate you coming on, but man, I appreciate, I appreciate what you're doing.

• 2:49:50Jocko Willink?

  What you're doing for veterans, you know, that are out there, what you're doing for your whole community of people that are making their life better because they're out there. They got, they got a mission and, and absolutely what you've done for me, helped me out delivering silver platter bow hunting to me, which again, I'm sorry for everyone for being so spoiled. Uh, I'm lucky and I appreciate it, but man, it's been awesome and, and I want to help get other people heading down that path because man, I think it's beneficial in so many different ways, man.

• 2:50:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a hundred percent. I think it's an awesome, an awesome sport, especially for people that come from your background, um, who are looking for a new mission. You know, you said it perfectly because with all of you guys who have done it, you know, learning a new discipline or a new trade is one thing, but then once it comes to like packing up to freaking go on call, that lights a whole different intensity where, you know, hey, we're meeting, you know, we're, we're, we're out at dark, back at dark. And when

• 2:50:59Speaker 01

  you're out there, you know, geared up and freaking ready to get after it, you know, I remember the first time you and I went out and we were on that hillside glassing and you just said, bro, this freaking, this is recon right now. Like, you know, I'd have a team right over there. There'd be freaking two dudes right there. They'd be like, you know, back up and then we'd be here and like, you know, the shit would be all pulled over tight, you know, it was, you were in your element and just dorking out.

• 2:51:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, you were head freaking dork on this scenario. So it's all good. Awesome, man. Echo, Charles, you can see what kind of focus and consistency it takes to, uh, to approach excellence in any element.

• 2:51:51Speaker 02

  Cognitive focus.

• 2:51:52Jocko Willink?

  But the pursuit never stops. The pursuit of excellence doesn't stop. What suggestions do you have? To get us moving in the right direction?

• 2:52:00Speaker 02

  Many, you know, we talked about being an athlete, right? The importance, the value of being an athlete, which I was with you the whole time. I agree fully. But we don't want to stop that just because we get older and take on other responsibilities.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting older?

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Well.

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta suck.

• 2:52:17Speaker 02

  It's just one of those things, man. The life I live. Nonetheless, we gotta stay in the game even on our off time. There's no off time, on time. There's just time. Something like that. Nonetheless, we have things to help you through this journey, supplementation. First thing, you talk about focus, we have discipline.

• 2:52:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad I was able to look at you just to get you on track, bro, because you were starting to stray.

• 2:52:40Speaker 02

  Well, whatever. You guys are talking about all this cool stuff.

• 2:52:43Speaker 01

  I could probably chime in on a few things because I can tell you like three things that are pinnacles for me from, you know, from origin. Cold War, freaking joint warfare and the vitamin D freaking have powered through COVID, you know, COVID year was like.

• 2:53:03Jocko Willink?

  No factor.

• 2:53:04Speaker 01

  No factor. But I was, those three for me are every day. They're like right next to my cup of coffee to where I know I'm getting after it first thing in the morning.

• 2:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, um, those are, those are freaking legit. The joint warfare is, the, the, go read the reviews on joint warfare. Don't listen to me. Who am I? I'm, I own the company. Of course I'm gonna tell you it's good, right? Go read the reviews from other people and what it does to them and what they say that grandmother started taking it. And all of a sudden, you know, she's whatever, playing tennis again and whatnot.

• 2:53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true. But this is, the whole purpose, yeah, you own the company. Cool. But the whole purpose that you have this stuff is because that was like your pursuit even before that.

• 2:53:49Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:53:49Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, you gotta take this stuff, pro oil, uh, you know, all the ingredients, you know, and then, well, you added some ingredients to the joint warfare.

• 2:53:56Jocko Willink?

  We did, we stepped it up.

• 2:53:56Speaker 02

  To make that one better.

• 2:53:57Jocko Willink?

  Because why not? Like, it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna take, no, make it better. Make it the best possible thing that you can put into your mouth. To make your freaking joints bulletproof, son.

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I'm with you with that that combo every day. Um, the cold war not as much. That that's kind of a seasonal thing.

• 2:54:17Speaker 01

  Don't like the cold?

• 2:54:18Jocko Willink?

  Super krill too. Get that krill oil on, man. Get them little fish down. What are they, fish?

• 2:54:23Speaker 02

  No, little shrimp.

• 2:54:24Jocko Willink?

  Little shrimps, little tiny shrimps.

• 2:54:25Speaker 02

  Kind of like shrimps, yeah. Uh, fish oil, good too, though, you know, might want to look.

• 2:54:29Jocko Willink?

  Fish oil is good. You're right.

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  Chalk is a label reader, I will say. If it's in there, he's he's read it and researched it.

• 2:54:38Jocko Willink?

  There's a reason that we see fish oil is like, whatever, that's your freaking $400 bow.

• 2:54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:44Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil?

• 2:54:45Speaker 02

  The entry or the?

• 2:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil is the freaking top of the line. Is the top of the line. Super krill is where it's at.

• 2:54:53Speaker 02

  I understand fully. Um, I mentioned the discipline, discipline go. Look, hey, look. Some of us are into energy drinks, but really we're not into energy drinks. We're into the idea of energy drinks. And what they don't tell you about the whole energy drink thing is that there's poison inside, straight up.

• 2:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Normal energy drinks.

• 2:55:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  Tradish.

• 2:55:12Speaker 02

  Tradish. That's why, yeah. So this is the upgrade. This is the, I don't know, whatever you guys call the upgrade.

• 2:55:17Jocko Willink?

  I don't even think it's an upgrade. I think it's new category.

• 2:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:19Jocko Willink?

  It's new category. It's like, oh, we're over here drinking poison. You're over here drinking something that's awesome for you.

• 2:55:24Speaker 01

  Clean, clean alternatives is like a long overdue category for, because think of how many guys went in and got after it in victory and then walked out and just grabbed dog crap in a plastic bottle to like have something on the way out the door. It is way past due, way past due.

• 2:55:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's almost like, and I'm not as in touch with it, but I'm, you know, I'm a casual, we'll say, but it seems like the whole energy.

• 2:55:55Jocko Willink?

  Casual what?

• 2:55:57Speaker 02

  It's.

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  I mean, besides life.

• 2:55:59Speaker 02

  Everything, all of the above.

• 2:56:00Jocko Willink?

  You said you're a casual. What are you talking about?

• 2:56:02Speaker 02

  A fan of energy drinks.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, before you were, see, if it wasn't for me being on deployment, like. Like with with energy drinks and needing them because I need it's like hey I'm freaking wicked tired. And I've been awake for forty eight hours and I need caffeine into my system. That's why I started drinking energy drinks. And then, but what do you deal with? You deal with, oh, I got done drinking the energy drink. Now I I don't have that freaking high anymore. And now I feel like dog shit.

• 2:56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and that's exactly.

• 2:56:32Jocko Willink?

  Because there's a bunch of junk in there.

• 2:56:34Speaker 02

  That's exactly what I'm saying. And you're talking about like.

• 2:56:36Jocko Willink?

  What about when you in the club? What about you when you were freaking doorman of the year or whatever?

• 2:56:42Speaker 02

  I never, I never.

• 2:56:45Speaker 02

  I never got into energy drinks as much, you know, every once in a while or whatever. I just drink coffee because they have coffee available, so whatever, as far as staying up. No, but I'm talking about like activity. You're talking about going on deployment, all this stuff.

• 2:56:58Jocko Willink?

  I don't like the taste of coffee.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, I understand, sir.

• 2:57:01Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to Evan, and Evan's like, bro, he's like, he's like, you know, I want to get bring you up to Utah and I, you know, I'm gonna figure out what. What um, coffee, you know, what coffee you like, you know, there's gotta be a way, you know, he's like a, he's like a. As the malié of the Java bean. Right, and he's like wanting to create it. A javier? He was texting me this, he's like, yeah, man, he's like, come to Salt Lake, man, I'm gonna get you the, you know, the. The bean that you like and the roast that you like and all this stuff. I texted him back, I go, bro, I don't even like coffee ice cream. Good luck. And he started laughing.

• 2:57:34Speaker 02

  But that's kind of an important factor right there because coffee like coffee is like beer, where it's like at the end of the day, you're always gonna have the beer. Flavor, there's a beer flavor, just like there's a coffee flavor, and then from that flavor, then you get all the different bridles.

• 2:57:47Jocko Willink?

  If it wasn't tasting like coffee, it wouldn't be coffee.

• 2:57:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:57:50Jocko Willink?

  If you made it with freaking cocoa beans, it wouldn't be coffee.

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:57:54Jocko Willink?

  If you made it with tea leaves, it wouldn't be coffee.

• 2:57:56Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah, exactly right, or strawberries or whatever Evan was trying to put on your your flavor.

• 2:58:01Jocko Willink?

  We'll see, I don't know, he's a freaking, he's into it, man. He maybe he can pull it off. We'll see. It's chocolate peanut butter, you might be all over that. Well, that's like you with milk, bro. Like I sent you like a whatever, you got some milk and then like. Two weeks later, you're like a freaking crackhead. Bro, we need some more of this milk over here, man. I was like, dude, alright, we'll give you some. Freebase in that freaking mold, dude.

• 2:58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's true, but the energy drinks is like a lot of these activities that they're sometimes in my observation, which is limited, I know, but in my observation, it's associated with these activities that are kinda. Let's just say they would benefit more from a healthy.

• 2:58:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:58:40Speaker 02

  Fuel.

• 2:58:41Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:58:41Speaker 02

  Source.

• 2:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, why would you be doing out something that's physically demanding and putting poison in your body?

• 2:58:46Speaker 02

  So you, okay.

• 2:58:47Jocko Willink?

  Don't do it.

• 2:58:48Speaker 02

  You go to Big Sky or whatever, you know, that hill you're always sending me videos of you guys charging or whatever. What's it called? The Big?

• 2:58:54Speaker 01

  It's a mountain.

• 2:58:58Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Bro, when I ran up that thing after you and I were like, kept walking down that mountain every day and be like, man, this would be a good workout. Why, when I went and did it, I was like, yep, confirmed. That sucked.

• 2:59:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. So, so then you ride the lift up there. Okay, so in the snow, we'll say. If you're really used to it, okay, good. But just being in the snow, just like just being in the ocean or on deployment or in the, in the woods. Pardon my lack of terminology, but.

• 2:59:32Jocko Willink?

  It is technically, it is woods.

• 2:59:33Speaker 02

  Okay, just being there, bro, it's like that's in and of itself is a thing. Like you can't, you're not just cruising, you're just, you're working.

• 2:59:41Jocko Willink?

  Right, okay.

• 2:59:42Speaker 02

  And then you're doing your activity on top of that. And whether you're in big sky, you know, the woods, water, whatever, like, bro, you're gonna, you're not gonna want poison in that scenario right there.

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:59:51Speaker 02

  Or even anything that you're gonna pay the price later or something like.

• 2:59:54Jocko Willink?

  And it's not needed. You don't need to. You don't need to have poison.

• 2:59:57Speaker 02

  And that's why they just go boom in the house.

• 3:00:00Jocko Willink?

  Hey, Wawa, if you want this stuff, if you're on the East Coast, go to Wawa. And you know, they were saying they tried to pull the reins on us. They're like, don't, don't. Tell everyone to clear the shelves.

• 3:00:11Speaker 02

  Stop, stop sending customers.

• 3:00:13Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're saying. We're back. See if you can run that supply chain into the ground. I, I challenge you all to see if you can run that supply chain into the ground for me. See what happens. If you do, I'll figure something out. I'll do, what's something I could do? Like make a funny hat, put on a funny hat and do a video or something.

• 3:00:30Speaker 01

  Grow those bangs back.

• 3:00:32Jocko Willink?

  Free his valiant haircut back. That ain't happening. To me, to me, hair, it was so, it's bothersome to me when my hair is like a quarter of an inch long or whatever, like it already bothers me. So go, going that distance would freaking drive me crazy.

• 3:00:47Speaker 02

  Unacceptable.

• 3:00:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:48Speaker 02

  But either way, I'm sure you'll figure something out. Uh, yeah, vitamin shop and there's a subscription scenario.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Fuel.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  You don't want to run out of that, uh, that, that everyday, um, supply, you know?

• 3:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Fuel dot com, which by the way is where you can go get this stuff.

• 3:01:02Speaker 01

  They call it the good good.

• 3:01:04Jocko Willink?

  What's the good good?

• 3:01:06Speaker 01

  That subscript.

• 3:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. The subscription. Well, here's the deal, man. We're, we're not, look, we're not alone in the world.

• 3:01:11Speaker 01

  Promo code good good.

• 3:01:13Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's capitalism out here. We're competing on an open market. We're competing with some people that are pretty big. So when you compete with people that are pretty big, you've got to figure out how you're going to make something happen. So what we wanted to do is free shipping. Right? Cause people are very used to free shipping. Cause there's some companies out there that do free shipping. And so how do we, how can we make that happen? The way we made it happen is if you get subscriptions to any of these products, boom, shipping's free. There you go. All right. Cool.

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  Uh, also origin usa.com. Okay. This is where you can get American made stuff from jujitsu stuff all the way down to non jujitsu everyday stuff. Like for real, everyday stuff.

• 3:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Like jeans.

• 3:01:51Speaker 02

  Like jeans.

• 3:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Like a wallets, boots.

• 3:01:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, still waiting on my hat, Pete.

• 3:01:56Jocko Willink?

  Which hat? A beanie? A, a ball cap?

• 3:02:00Speaker 01

  No, that, you know, the one that he wears.

• 3:02:02Speaker 02

  We both wore that.

• 3:02:03Jocko Willink?

  What do they call those? Those are called a flat cap.

• 3:02:06Speaker 01

  But they're like, kind of the Frenchy ones?

• 3:02:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like, it's called a flat cap.

• 3:02:09Speaker 01

  It's not like a fedora or whatever?

• 3:02:11Jocko Willink?

  It's called a flat cap. It's like what you see like a, a little British dude wearing, right?

• 3:02:16Speaker 01

  Andy got me one in France, a camo one that I wear sometimes and it's made out.

• 3:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Camo flat cap?

• 3:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, dude. Legit. And it's made out of like sweatshirt material and it's freaking comfy on your head. I hunted with it. I told Pete, like, make me that out of my origin hoodie material. Cause that hoodie is like the, my favorite thing I wear around the house every day.

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that thing's freaking.

• 3:02:43Speaker 01

  The freaking midweight, that soft ass one is freaking awesome.

• 3:02:47Speaker 02

  Right, I used to say it, most comfortable sweat suit ever in existence.

• 3:02:52Speaker 01

  Do they make pants to match that?

• 3:02:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they do.

• 3:02:53Speaker 01

  That are like longer than 28 inches or.

• 3:02:57Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, you got a, you got a situation.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  We'll sew two pairs together for your freaking long ass legs.

• 3:03:05Speaker 02

  I heard they, or I saw they had some socks brewing.

• 3:03:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, socks are brewing. We're gonna make everything.

• 3:03:10Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 3:03:10Jocko Willink?

  Make everything, everything, we're bringing it back to America. We're gonna make it so you can wear it. And we will make, like, they're making all these different, like, cool socks, but at some point, I'm just gonna make straight up white socks like you know I roll.

• 3:03:23Speaker 02

  See, hey, you have a lot of good ideas. You do.

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  That one.

• 3:03:28Speaker 01

  When are you gonna make a jock strap?

• 3:03:29Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, man.

• 3:03:31Speaker 01

  Dude, you need to make a jock strap.

• 3:03:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a good call, man. That's a great, that's a, that's a great one.

• 3:03:40Jocko Willink?

  I've been hearing that joke since I was in third grade.

• 3:03:44Speaker 01

  For good reason.

• 3:03:46Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, good. Yes, all American made stuff, really good. Also Jaco's store, it's called Jaco's store and this is where you can get shirts and rash guards and hoodies and hats and stuff that are representative of the path directly.

• 3:04:00Jocko Willink?

  And then there's the shirt locker, which this is how, this is what savages people are.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  Solid name, too, by the way.

• 3:04:06Jocko Willink?

  This is what, this is how savage people are. So we have this thing called the shirt locker where it's, it's a subscription and if you're on the subscription, you get like a one-off t-shirt.

• 3:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Like if you have to be on, like you can't go buy it later. So somebody's, actually I think a couple of people are already jacking the designs.

• 3:04:24Speaker 02

  I don't even know how they're doing that. That, it's not like that design is like on display somewhere.

• 3:04:30Jocko Willink?

  People posted it. People posted the real one. So like, and then, then they jack it and they put it on these websites like, hey, it's freaking ridiculous. That's how savage people are.

• 3:04:41Speaker 02

  It is savage and it is lame, but it's, there's like a few violations.

• 3:04:45Jocko Willink?

  I only use the word savage in a negative way, but I all. No, I definitely use it in a positive way.

• 3:04:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:04:52Jocko Willink?

  More off, I think you just, you just more attuned to it. Cause I say it with such dislike those just that just what a savage.

• 3:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:01Jocko Willink?

  When, when somebody's like, doesn't have the creativity to figure out how to make a cool T-shirt and sell it instead. They're just savages and just stealing the design.

• 3:05:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:11Jocko Willink?

  What, who does that?

• 3:05:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, yeah, it's.

• 3:05:15Speaker 01

  Savages.

• 3:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Now what's jacked up is you could also be like, oh man, like you can, it can obviously be super positive thing. Like, oh, these do, like you said earlier, you're like, hey, where the Guida twins are from, or where the Guida brothers are from. There's a bunch of savages in their neighborhood. They're wrestlers and they're fighters. And I was like, yeah, cool. I totally knew what you were talking about.

• 3:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:05:36Jocko Willink?

  So it's one of those words that can go either way.

• 3:05:38Speaker 01

  That's a compliment word. And we've had many conversations where if Jaco says savage, it's, it's a high compliment for someone that doesn't know they just got one.

• 3:05:49Jocko Willink?

  It is a weird thing, cause I use it as the highest, one of the highest compliments and one of the lowest insults I can give. It's literally the same word. That dude's a savage or that dude's a savage. What a freaking bunch of savages.

• 3:06:05Speaker 02

  I don't know how they get the, the design. Cause it's not like, okay, like the one, okay, so hardcore recondos are good or discipline equals freedom. You go to like, I don't want to tell anyone how to, how to get it, but it's on display somewhere, you know? But the shirt locker ones, they tend, they're not, there's like a hint of them somewhere.

• 3:06:24Jocko Willink?

  No, but no, no, people are taking, when they get their shirt locker shirt and they're posting it. No, they're posting it like, yo, got the new shirt locker shirt.

• 3:06:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:06:33Speaker 01

  Game over.

• 3:06:34Speaker 02

  Okay. So how they, how they do that, right? The, the knockoffs, basically the counterfeit pirated like designed shirts. They go to one of these like internet.

• 3:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:06:44Speaker 02

  Uh, what do you call it? Purchase, buy to order.

• 3:06:47Speaker 01

  The recipe.

• 3:06:47Speaker 02

  Or whatever. No, you can do it. Here's, here's how bad it is if you, if you know about it. And you can, if you just have like half a brain, no offense to the people who bought those. But you can tell, you look at it and it's like this weird like mock-up of the design on this real like. Real like what do you call it emaciated model?

• 3:07:06Speaker 01

  It's like when you buy a Metallica T-shirt like from some dude on the beach.

• 3:07:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:11Speaker 01

  And it looks like there's like plastic stickers like.

• 3:07:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:07:14Speaker 01

  Stuck to your freaking shirt.

• 3:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, what I feel bad about is though, is I know that some people are doing like, they're like, oh, cool. Like, I want to support because we're like you, like, hey, man, if you want to support what's going on here, then you get some, get some gear. And so they actually are stoked like, oh, cool, I'm helping out, you know, the podcast, we're in the game. And then they realize they're giving their money to some freaking savage, some freaking savage out there.

• 3:07:36Speaker 01

  Stop the savage support.

• 3:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:38Speaker 02

  Yep. And they, yeah, and they use like super, when I say substandard material, it's like, you know, it's like the internet shirt that you print. You know, it's like that. Then they get that and then it's like, well, not to mention, there's more to it than just that front design. There's a lot more to it.

• 3:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's layers?

• 3:07:54Speaker 02

  Layers, there's little, there's little elements of the shirt. If you examine it, you're like, okay, I'm in the game with this shirt, even on a physical level. Not to mention the philosophical level and you don't get that either, man. So it's brutal. Anyway, if you want, uh, if you want to get involved with the Shirt Locker or any of these other things, jocko store.com.

• 3:08:14Jocko Willink?

  Also, we got, uh, you know, you should possibly subscribe to this podcast, but on, but on top of that, so you have a podcast. There's, there's a, there's a, um, podcast, it's Knock On Podcast.

• 3:08:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:26Jocko Willink?

  And it's talking about archery, but it's not just talking about archery. You talk about, you interview, you know, different people.

• 3:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool people.

• 3:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Different people from different walks of life, how they got where they're at, where, where they are. Of course you do cover, if you just want to get freaking granular on some archery shit, well, you can go, you'll get so granular, you won't even know where you are anymore.

• 3:08:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've imploded friends that try to go too deep down the archery rabbit hole. Like we had one blow up today.

• 3:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Can't go too deep, man. You gotta be careful, man. It's like crack, dude, you know, like you gotta be careful. You start going down that rabbit hole. Next thing you know, you look up and your world's exploded. Uh, so yeah, check out, check out that podcast, Knock On Podcast. If you want to hear more about archery and just other aspects of life, obviously you can subscribe to this podcast. Um, we also have Jocko Unraveling. I've been rolling out some, some episodes with, with, with, uh, Darryl Cooper. Which are, which are kinda some crazy episodes coming out and they're just getting crazier. Him, we want to talk about, me and him are like rabbit hole freaking, uh, uh, point men. Vietnam going deep in some mayhem with a, with a angle flashlight and a 45 caliber pistol.

• 3:09:44Jocko Willink?

  And we're going down some holes that they're scary. So you can come check that out. We got the grounded podcast. We got the warrior kid podcast. Uh, we can also, you can also join us on the underground for the Jaco underground, which is,

• 3:09:59Jocko Willink?

  it's just a little, it's a little like when you, like, here's, here's something you'll understand. Echo Charles, you used to work in the clubs, right?

• 3:10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:07Jocko Willink?

  You're in the clubs.

• 3:10:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:08Jocko Willink?

  You're in the clubs.

• 3:10:08Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say.

• 3:10:09Jocko Willink?

  And there's like the front door, right? Where people are coming in, right? And they're feeling like, yeah, I'm in the club.

• 3:10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:15Jocko Willink?

  But then there's also like a VIP scenario.

• 3:10:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:10:19Jocko Willink?

  There's something else going on, right? He calls it the back door. Yeah. So there's something else. There's like a little bit more, right? Going on.

• 3:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:27Jocko Willink?

  So we have, we have the Jaco underground podcast, Jaco underground.com. If you wanna, if you wanna come and hang out a little bit more, Echo and I are, we're in there. We're chilling. We got bottle service back there, I guess. Is that the type of thing that's going on?

• 3:10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, there, sure. There is bottle service going on.

• 3:10:44Jocko Willink?

  There's bottle service.

• 3:10:45Speaker 02

  Metaphorically.

• 3:10:46Jocko Willink?

  Metaphorically, cause you can send a question and, and if you're in the underground, you can send a question. We're going through those questions. We're, I'm putting out little, um, other things that I'm diving into.

• 3:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're interesting because they explain a lot. Like when you listen to it, you're like, and you kinda put it all together. If you're one of those people who are like, oh, I see what he did there. And when you remember some stuff that you heard, you're like, ah, and it starts to paint this bigger picture and explain a lot of the stuff.

• 3:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, there's a holistic viewpoint that starts to come into the horizon. So go to Jaco underground.com if you wanna get in there. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month. We're trying to jack all your money. No, if you can't afford it, go, go to assistance at Jaco underground.com. But we do need to have a contingency in case things go sideways. In case freaking big brother comes down and just starts stomping out freedom of speech. We gotta have a little access port to be able to still do what we're doing and put out the word. We also don't wanna have a bunch of, uh, of, uh, sponsors that are saying.

• 3:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Um, hey, we don't want you to talk about this because we think it might be offensive to our brand. We're not doing that. Jaco Underground.com, uh, YouTube. We got a YouTube channel where Echo puts up videos. Also, uh, all kinds of more information than you could shake a stick at. Knock on archery. So check those out for a bunch of information. Also, Origin USA has a little YouTube channel talking about what's going on up in Farmington. Mainly we got psychological warfare. What's that all about Echo Charles?

• 3:12:24Speaker 01

  It's an album. It's a Jaco album with Jaco tracks on it, helping us get through our moments of weakness if they may come about. Hundred percent effective, by the way.

• 3:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Excellent. We got some books. Final Spin.

• 3:12:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a novel. It's kind of a novel. It's, it's kind of crazy. It's cool. The final edits are coming back right now. Um, and you always get like little comments and we'll just say it's going to be interesting to see how this one hits.

• 3:12:54Speaker 01

  Oh, comments with the edits?

• 3:12:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they'll put like something. They'll give you edits, but then they'll be like, I could, you know, it's like, yeah. So we're getting it's, check it out. If you want that first edition, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluations, The Protocol, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid One, Two, Three, and Four, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. You're going through that right now, right?

• 3:13:15Speaker 01

  Yep. Three quarters of the way through, I guess.

• 3:13:17Jocko Willink?

  You're listening to it.

• 3:13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:13:19Jocko Willink?

  How's that? I listened to some of it. It seems like the guy is a pretty good reader.

• 3:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

• 3:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, some of these readers are just offensive. Like you listen to them and you're like, this guy is just picked this up for the first time. He has no idea what's going on, no context, and he's just reading the words on the page.

• 3:13:35Speaker 01

  I thought that the first like hour, I probably thought, but then some of the things that he wrote reminded me of my grandfather so much to where now when I hear it, I hear my grandpa talking because he was.

• 3:13:52Speaker 01

  He was gritty, you know, Korean War gritty and Depression gritty. So like I'm hearing him tell it how it is. And, you know, and even like the terminology like he was a good man. That was classic, you know, that was classic Papa right there. He's like, you know, he was a good man, or you know, that, that, that man's a coward, or you know, he was like, there was a clear line. You're above it or below it. That was it.

• 3:14:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Hackworth, Hackworth definitely does that. Hackworth said this guy, the guys are either studs or duds.

• 3:14:34Speaker 01

  No offense.

• 3:14:37Speaker 01

  Totally true.

• 3:14:41Jocko Willink?

  We got Esalen Front Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. You go to esalenfront.com for details there. We have EF Online, which is, which is online training for leadership. We have musters where we get together and we get granular on leadership. We're executing these this year. The only reason we didn't, we were gonna execute one last year, the last one of the year, and then I got Miss Rona. So we had to freaking cancel that thing. But we're doing Orlando, May 25th and 26th, Phoenix, August 17th and 18th, Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Go to extremeownership.com. We've sold out every event that we've ever done.

• 3:15:20Jocko Willink?

  So, and these events are, we have less seats because of social distancing and whatnot. So there's less seats. So if you want to come, get there ASAP. We have EF Battlefield where we go out onto actual battlefields. The next one's coming up, Erden. We're doing the Battle of Gettysburg. We sold out the first one. We opened up a second one. Register ASAP if you want to come to that. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, you can check out Mark Lee's mom. Mark Lee's mom has her own charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved,

• 3:15:58Jocko Willink?

  go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want more of my sustained sagas, or you want more of Echo's mysterious meanderings, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, Instagram, and on Facebook. Echo's at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink Dudley. So Dudley can be found at knockonarchery.com. And then on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, it's at knock on TV.

• 3:16:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:16:28Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 3:16:30Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 3:16:31Jocko Willink?

  YouTube, knock on archery.

• 3:16:32Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, just instas knock on TV.

• 3:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check, wait.

• 3:16:38Speaker 01

  Wait, Twitter might be.

• 3:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Twitter is too. I checked them this morning and, and Facebook looks like that too. Echo, you got anything else?

• 3:16:45Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, if like I have kids that I want them to get in art into archery, obviously you have, you know, direction for that scenario.

• 3:16:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yep. No, same exact thing. Doesn't matter the age group, you know, look for a good shop, see if they have a good youth program. If not, then dive down the, down the YouTube rathole or, you know, follow on social media, try to give some type of free education, you know? If not every day, every other day. I mean, a lot of what I do is just trying to help the archery lifestyle in some form, form or fashion.

• 3:17:19Speaker 02

  Is there, so I got my son, he's four, a bow from Amazon. He, it's, and it's like perfect where he puts a lot of effort and then he can pull it back. So I remember pulling back thinking like.

• 3:17:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is it like a compound bow?

• 3:17:32Speaker 02

  No, it's like.

• 3:17:33Speaker 01

  Four?

• 3:17:33Speaker 02

  Amazon, yeah.

• 3:17:34Speaker 01

  Dang.

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  It's the kind where I pulled it back. I was like, oh, he might not be able to do this. And then, but when he does it, he can do it.

• 3:17:40Jocko Willink?

  What's it shooting? Is it shooting suction cups or what's it shooting? Like Nerf things or what's it shooting?

• 3:17:45Speaker 02

  I would say, and I don't, yeah, I don't know about all the arrow tips, heads, whatever.

• 3:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Like what is it? What is the end of it made of?

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Looks, it reminds me of, looks like, you know, the old school, like, you know, if you have archery class at school, you know, the thing like it, it's, it's not sharp, but it's made to stick into something.

• 3:18:03Speaker 01

  A blunt point?

• 3:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like a blunt point.

• 3:18:06Speaker 02

  But it has a little tip to it, kind of, kind of a thing.

• 3:18:08Jocko Willink?

  But you couldn't like cut yourself just by scrap, scratch yourself with that.

• 3:18:13Speaker 01

  Negative.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  I remember those, I remember those ones.

• 3:18:15Speaker 02

  But the, the question is like, if I just buy a random bow like that, is that like a note, like, should I not do that?

• 3:18:22Speaker 01

  Honestly, with kids that are that young, just let them freaking watch arrows fly and have fun.

• 3:18:28Speaker 02

  Okay, that was my mindset.

• 3:18:29Speaker 01

  Pull back and let it rip. Keep them close. So, you know, I tell people. You know, kids like playing games that they always win at. So, you know, if you try to make your kid shoot a target at your distance, it's going to be problematic, you know, keep it, keep a target big, keep them close. If they see themselves hitting in the middle, they don't really make the correlation of, well, that target's bigger than dad's or this one's closer. They're, you know, if you're just like, alright, you know, you shoot for the gold, I'm gonna shoot for the gold. Let's, you know, and if they're like, I beat you again, I beat you again. That's perfect scenario.

• 3:19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19:06Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, we started talking about making a warrior kid bow. What do you think?

• 3:19:11Speaker 02

  I think that that's a great idea.

• 3:19:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:19:14Jocko Willink?

  What age, Dud, can a kid get like a bow that's freaking like pretty legit?

• 3:19:20Speaker 01

  I, I think probably by seven or eight, they can be going down the right path where you can teach some solid fundamentals and get something set up for them.

• 3:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's the warrior kid age too. Coincidentally, we might have to keep going down that path. Awesome. Dudley, anything else?

• 3:19:38Speaker 01

  I'm good.

• 3:19:39Jocko Willink?

  Right. Awesome. Well, like I said earlier, man, thanks for, thanks for everything you've done for the archery community. Thanks for what you're doing for all the vets all over the place. And, and really, you know, thanks for what you've done for me. I know that you, like I said, silver platter, man. It's been freaking awesome. I appreciate it. And all you got back from me was a freaking broke neck.

• 3:20:01Speaker 01

  And a freaking brown paper sack for instructions yesterday.

• 3:20:05Jocko Willink?

  And you nearly drowned. I broke your neck and almost drowned you. I'm, I'm the best, man. I'm just a savage.

• 3:20:14Speaker 01

  He calls his friend Josh over to like, give me a board. So I'm like, oh, man, this is freaking awesome. Like, he didn't even like deliver the cherry. He like had someone else make the cherry and then freaking just threw me into the freaking sea soup, freaking watched me drown in seaweed. Get that 40-foot leash that was on my board wrapped around my neck 15 times.

• 3:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, uh, look, I'm not the best guy in the world, I'm sorry. But I appreciate your efforts back at me. Uh, thanks for telling us everything you learned today. Like I said, it's not just about archery. It's about life. It's about business. It's about moving forward. And thanks to your dad and his service and, and thanks to all the vets out there. And thanks to the current service members out there around the world protecting our freedom. When you get done with that mission, you're gonna need a new mission. Check out some archery, man. It's good for you. And to the people out there in service here at home, to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all the other first responders.

• 3:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for protecting us in our times of need. And to everyone else out there. Just remember that bow hunting is like life. The winds don't come easy and you don't always win. You don't always win. But you still have to prepare. You still have to get the reps. You still have to go through the process and you have to keep going. Keep trying to improve so that you can get what you are after.

• 3:21:58Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is John Dudley and Echo and Jaco. Out.